THE GREAT ESCAPE, PART 2

Note to the reader: This is a continuation of a larger odyssey, starting with the entry The Indian Empire Strikes Back.  That itself is the sequel to my prior trip to Asia, starting with The Saga Begins (again).  Yeah, it's a lot of stuff about a coward's journey through scary Asian countries and cultures, but it's not your average travel blog.  You can get by without reading what came before this entry, but it does my heart good to see the page hit counts go up. :)

In case you missed it, this is part 2.  Part 1 of the Great Escape comes before part 2.  There is even a part 3 coming.  Ideally.

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Arriving in New Delhi just after midnight, step one was to get my checked luggage.  The signs pointed to carousel number 9, which I found and stood at just the right spot to see the bags drop from the shoot until rude person after rude person decided that there was room to stand right in front of me, forcing me to reposition myself for optimal surveillance.

The screen above this carousel took a while to show our flight - maybe 10 or 15 minutes.  Then after 5 more minutes, our flight disappeared from this screen.  After another 10 minutes it reappeared for 2 minutes and then left again, apparently in a rage quit.  I was almost ready to go ask where the bags for my flight were going to be when I saw it: the carousel, its rotating floor parts clad in the purest shimmering silmite, held aloft my suitcase from the bosom of the luggage shoot, signifying by divine providence that I, Scott, was to carry Samsonite.

That is why I am your king.

One's mind wanders when waiting for one's checked luggage.

Anyway, I got my bag and exited the airport with the need to find a taxi to take me to the hotel I booked for the night.  Once again, upon exiting the baggage claim area I am accosted by numerous folks claiming to want to help me attain a taxi ride.  Being a seasoned traveller now, I am too wise for these swindlers, and I pass by and through their midst with a simple “no” and a wave of the hand learned from studying under Master Kenobi.

This isn't the sucker you're looking for.  Move along.

Aside from ignoring the plethora of false taxi scammers, my plan is to go to the taxi queue and get an airport-sanctioned ride like a civilized traveler.  The flaw in this plan is that there does not seem to be the expected airport taxi queue system at work here, rather there are two types of taxi acquisition procedures.

The first one I see is the “pre-paid taxi” option.  This is well-advertised and leads one to a glorified ticket booth possessing two windows for minimally parallel processing of the apparently constant demand for its dubious mode of transport.  There are two lines of people standing there. I note its presence but move on for option #2.

The second option is the regular taxi option where you pay once you get to your destination.  However, instead of a queue there is an area one goes and hails a ride from a conspicuous absence of available cabs.  In this area, in clear rebellion to civilized taxi queue behavior, is a mob of people all competing simultaneously for the few taxi cabs that deign to cater to this crowd.

I do not like the idea of competing with a mob where I do not even know the rules, and so option #1 now becomes my only option.  I thus approach the pre-paid taxi hut and begin to ponder its mysteries.  It is not obvious how this is supposed to work, but I queue myself up and begin observing the behavior of those in front of me.

What I’m looking for is an indication of where these cabs are for which we’re all queued up to pre-pay.  I cannot spot anything that looks obviously like a set of cabs waiting for us, so I watch the folks in front of me to see where they go after they procure their ticket.  After each spends some time at the window they go around the left of the building toward the back and then seem to disappear.  This is either a good thing (the taxis are there but out of my line of sight) or a bad thing (the people are being added to a large pile of corpses behind the ticket shack).  Only time will tell.

My turn arrives. I show them the destination address.  I pay the fee.  I’m given a torn piece of pink paper with cryptic scrawl on it as a receipt and then am impatiently waved away.

Jedi tricks work only on the weak-minded.  I do not go away.  I lean in.

“Where do I go?” I ask.

I am first answered by a look of scorn and contempt.  Clearly one capable of pre-paying for a taxi should not be so stupid.  “Go around to the back,” I’m told.

Riiiight.  I was hoping for something a little more concrete.

So, I and my wheeled suitcase make the journey around to the back where immediately I’m approached by a stranger who reaches for said suitcase.  I do not let go of my precious belongings and ask him to explain what he thinks he is doing.  He points to the "receipt" in my hand and gestures toward a group of non-taxi-looking cars parked nearby.

I am reminded of the warnings my mother gave me when I was little.

Seems legit.

My “stranger danger” alarm is going off at full blast, but as I survey the scene I recognize the guy who had been in front of me in line now getting into one of these cars, so I decide to take the chance.

I let go of the suitcase with the intent to stick to it like a leech on a redneck's back after his summer bath.

We walk up to what looks like a mini-minivan with a rack on the roof.  Compared to minivans we Americans are used to, it is smaller in every dimension: height, length, width and safety.

Even the tires are "mini."

The interior has been classed-up, however, with all of the seats elegantly covered by white hotel towels with large safety-pins to hold them to the seats.

The guy with my suitcase attempts to fit my luggage into the trunk but the trunk is not big enough.  It’s not that my bag is that big – it is a medium-sized wheeled suitcase – but the trunk is really that small.

So he tosses it up on the roof in the rack and secures it with gravity.  That sounds more high-tech than it really is.  And it is a lot less high-tech than I wish it was.

He who so gently tossed my bag up on the roof of this hotwheel-sized mini-taxi then opens the door to the back seat and rolls down the window.  At first I think this is a nice gesture for my benefit since I’m already sweating in the New Delhi night heat, but as I get in and they close the door, I quickly perceive the truth behind this kindness as it has given them a “window of opportunity.”

I get in and they close the door.  The driver also gets in.

The bag boy and one of his friends are now standing there at the window, staring at me.

"All set?" I ask, knowing what they really want but not wanting to be maneuvered so.

The luggage tosser rubs fingers together and mutters something about him being a productive assistant.  The driver, meanwhile, is concentrating on taking his time doing a complicated pre-flight procedure, obviously buying time for these swindlers.

Ok, fine... I whip out the wallet.

"Country money, country money!" the two tossers begin chanting.  This could be interpreted to mean either that they want Indian Rupees or else money from my home country.  I can see the greed in their eyes as it reflects the airport terminal lights in the shape of dollar signs, so I know what they really want.  And they ain't gettin' it.

I fish through my still-substantial wad of rupee cash and hand them two 10 rupee notes.  It is the lowest-denomination of bills that I possess.  I’m seasoned enough in the exchange rates now to know this amounts to about 30 cents American.  As I do this, they lean in and see inside my wallet and say "no, 100, 100!"  They are asking for an outrageous $1.50 now.  Truly preposterous.

I hand them the 20 rupees and firmly say "NO" in response to their polite demands.  It’s not that I’m Scrooge and loathe to part with these hard-earned rupees.  I just don’t like their attitude and want to let them know it.  Why 20 rupees?  I feel it is more insulting to give them a pittance than it is to give them nothing at all.

At this they walk away, giving me one last look that says I’m a greedy American tourist and they will use this pittance to feed only 1 of their 8 starving children.

Uh huh.  I saw Total Recall.  I know this scam.

With their departure, the driver coincidentally finishes the pre-flight and we’re off.  He says he knows where the hotel is, and according to Google Maps which I've readied for my own comfort and sanity, he is heading in the right general direction.  My only concern now is the ill-secured suitcase on top of the vehicle as we race around sharp turns and bounce over speed bump after speed bump on the way out of the airport.

Until we get lost.

The hotel is in the middle of what looks like an industrial park with an extensive grid of streets, some of which are barricaded and impassible, others which are barricaded but not sufficiently so to stop my resourceful driver.  His navigational choices begin to betray an obvious sense of cluelessness.

I lean forward and show him my smartphone and its clear directional indicators pointing the way to our destination.

He looks at this closely, even taking it from my hand to examine its pixel-perfect representation of our current location and the turns ahead we should take.  He then hands it back and proceeds to take wrong turn after wrong turn.  What makes this more comical is that he is listening to music on the radio that sounds very much like the Chipmunks singing something to Indian-style music accompanied by a woman singing in Hindi after inhaling helium from a balloon.  I feel like I should be in a 1940s Disney cartoon with the music, the mini-minivan, my luggage sliding and bouncing around on the top, the bumps, the wild turns, and being lost in the industrial park.

He stops and asks directions no less than five times before he arrives at the right gate to get into the hotel.  Once the security team is convinced we are not terrorists, which they verify using a long-eared bloodhound dog who looks to have been trained during the first world war to sniff out bombs, they open the gate, my driver pops the clutch and stalls the "car," and after a coughing engine restart we pull up into the hotel's entryway.  He immediately gets out and pulls my suitcase from the roof (thankfully still there!) and looks at me expectantly.

Um... no.  I don’t think so.

No tip for you!

I take my suitcase, turn my back on him in the Klingon ritual of disaccommodation, and enter the hotel.

Like the Leela, customer service here is impeccable, even at 2am on Friday night.  A bellman takes my bag and the check-in clerk takes me up to my room to check me in, making sure my bag arrives there at the same time as I.  The check-in procedure is quick and painless, and I’m soon preparing for bed.

I’m so tired at this point I nearly make the fatal mistake of brushing my teeth using the tap water, but true paranoia is ever-vigilant, and I catch myself in time to use the bottled water.

Thus prepared, I sleep with an alarm set for 7am, knowing that some sacrifice of sleep will be necessary to make tomorrow’s final egress from India unhurried and untroubled.

I quickly fall into the sleep of the overly-confident, having had phases one and two of my escape-from-India plans execute with precision and grace.  The stage for phase three is set.  The pawns are positioned and my bishops poised to strike.  Check and mate in 3 moves, India.  Your move.  Do your worst.

You can't win.

Cuz I’m a planner.

And every plan survives first contact with the enemy.

THE GREAT ESCAPE, PART 1

Note to the reader: This is a continuation of a larger odyssey, starting with the entry The Indian Empire Strikes Back.  That itself is the sequel to my prior trip to Asia, starting with The Saga Begins (again).  Yeah, it's a lot of stuff about a coward's journey through scary Asian countries and cultures, but it's not your average travel blog.  You can get by without reading what came before this entry, but it does my heart good to see the page hit counts go up. :)

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There are a great many proverbs and famous sayings that come from military campaigns throughout history.  For instance:

• Friendly fire ain’t. – Murphy
• Bring me my brown pants! – Anonymous Pirate
• Revenge is a dish best served cold, and it is very cold in space. – Kahn Noonien Singh

One which resonates with my own experience, however, comes from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder.  While the actual quote is somewhat more verbose, he is the source of the following well-known military proverb:

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy." - Helmie

So it was with this in mind when on Friday the 7th of May I began my journey out of Bangalore.

The day was like every other that week.  Starting the day early with an egg, cheese and chili pepper omelet, avoiding the sausage and bacon which while probably legitimately meat were never quite what you’d expect.  A glass of fresh pineapple juice to backfill my deficit of vitamins, plus a water to hydrate me for trip to the office.  A quick booking of one of Leela’s cars to take me to the office, and then I’m off to another day full of back-to-back meetings.

Now one who is familiar with the area will question why I booked a car to get to the SuccessFactors office in Bangalore.  The answer to this is best explained by recounting my first day at the office that week.

I knew ahead of time that Bangalore was going to be hot.  And by hot I don’t mean “unusually warm for May” I mean that it is so hot that on my first day there two hobbits came by and threw a ring into my hotel room.  And indeed, it was hot all week – highs around 40 Centigrade (which is 104 Fahrenheit for us non-metricified slobs).  This kinda of hot is not something one writes off as a “dry heat” either.  This is wicked hot and nasty humid.

Sultry.  (Movie reference: Throw Momma from the Train)

So on that Monday I decided I would dress for success: shorts and a relatively business-casual button-down Hawaiian shirt.  This was a wise choice, but failed to take into account just how hot each day would be from the start.

That first day we decided to walk to the office.  This walk would be fairly short – maybe a 10 minute trek.  Even better, it involved no life-threatening frogger maneuvers crossing the road as there is a pedestrian bridge mid-way between the hotel and the office that allows us to cross with only a minimum of peril.  (The bridge is of indeterminate age, probably not as heavily inspected as those I’m used to in America, and is used to support rather thick power cables crossing the street where these are laid right on the handrail where one is inclined to grab onto in the event of an earthquake, monsoon wind or raw paranoia incurred crossing bridges over deathly traffic flows.

This walk in reality, however, requires techniques one usually employs on moderately-difficult mountaineering.  The path along the road is a blatant refusal to cater to mobility-challenged persons, replete with open trenches exposing sewage flows, large mounds of soil, silt and asphalt, low-hanging tree branches over mine fields of scattered cinder blocks, and chunks of concrete tipped at all angles as though it were the aftermath of eons of micro-tectonic activity.

One does not simply walk to the office from Leela.  One treks.

And so on day one, sporting my shorts, new, air-permeable sneakers and Hawaiian shirt, I arrived at the office 10 minutes after leaving the hotel looking like I swam there.  I was drenched in sweat.

You know you’re really sweating when, upon arriving and shaking hands with folks, the office administrative assistant looks at you and says, “wow, you’re really sweating.”

I was sweating like a Star Trek TOS red shirt guy on his first beam-down.

In fact, it is worth pointing out that I anticipated this and planned ahead.

That there is my USB-powered personal fan, and mostly responsible for the fact that I lived to tell this tale.

Ok, so my point is that a combination of the heat, the trek and the fact that I sweat at the mere mention of heat means that from day #2 through the rest of the week I took a car to the office.  And, in true Leela style, their cars are BMW 5-series with lots of air conditioning and bottles of water.  Ah Leela, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways…

All week the weather was hot, the sun was intense, and the few clouds in the sky were meaningless reminders of cooler days… until Friday.  Friday, about mid-afternoon, the fountains of the great deep were opened and a repeat of Noah’s flood rains began.  While this helped to cool things down ever so slightly it also had the effect of heaping upon my travel-weary soul the concern that traffic to the airport that evening would be problematic, and even worse, perhaps the flight out that evening might be delayed or even canceled.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.  Indeed, this is why any general worth his medals has contingency plans.

I had already arranged for the Leela car to pick me up late afternoon and drive me to the airport with more than enough time to compensate for delays in getting there.  My flight was to depart at 9:20pm.  The typical travel time to the airport from the office is about one hour.  The car was picking me up at 4:30pm.  That left what I deemed to be a righteous four hour buffer in case Murphy would assert his laws upon my travel plans.

Right on time, Leela's BMW 5-something arrived to ferry me to the airport.  Nestled into the plush leather of the back seat, I relaxed into the long ride, shutting my eyes and closing out the world.  The patter of the rain on the roof, the unceasing beeping of the horns, and the constant delta-V of the driver's modus operandi conspired to lull me into false sense of security.  My plans were progressing satisfactorily.

Everything was proceeding as I had foreseen.

And that's when my plans encountered the enemy.  Reality asserted itself and at least three things conspired against us getting to the airport in a timely manner.

First, the rain, which continued to fall, was causing moderate street flooding.  In some cases there was rapidly-flowing water at least 4-8 inches in depth.  This did not seem to deter the driver, who, being an experienced Indian driver, can hydroplane without concern, knowing that those obstacles that can get out of his way will indeed do so, and those that don’t are merely participants in the grand karmic scheme of the universe.  Thus the risk here was that karma would kick me in the kiester and we’d be delayed due to a traffic incident involving this nice luxury hotel car and a hapless quadruped.

Second, the driver, upon questioning me on the time of my flight, concluded that I had MORE than enough time before the flight and that I would be criminally bored sitting at the airport for such a long wait before the flight’s scheduled departure.  My insistence on this being the less-stressful alternative held little sway in his thinking, and so this guy kindly decided on several detours showing me the seat of Bangalore parliament, the home of the governor, and several great shopping areas where I could get great deals on gifts for my wife.  The fact that I was refusing to take advantage of his advice to buy gifts for my wife got me a bit of a lecture about how to stay married, but again, weighing alternatives, I chose to remain unstranded in Bangalore as a means to eventually reunite with my wife.

Third, there was the massive traffic jam which added an additional 90 minutes to the hour travel time.  This caused the driver some angst as I believe he was hoping to be back to the hotel in time for other driving assignments, and so this worked in my favor as he chatted less and less as he became more and more frustrated by the traffic.

I on the other hand enjoyed the ride, reclining in Beemer luxury, relaxing in my justified air of self-confidence, knowing that my decision to exercise caution was going to get me to the airport still in time for a leisurely check-in.

When we finally did arrive at the airport 2.5 hours prior to departure, I did tip the driver to show the world that I’m not insensitive to the plight of the common man.  This time I pushed through my numerical resistance and laid 500 rupees on him.  That’s right.  500 smackers.  Half a “G.”

Nothing feels so good as to reward good help.  There ya go, Jeeves.  Buy your wife something nice at those stores you showed me.

Of course, later I double-checked how generous I truly was.  $7.42 in US dollars.

I'm a schmuck.

After check-in I discovered that my flight out of Bangalore to New Delhi was delayed about 30 minutes, ironically due to “too much traffic out of the airport.”  It was of no concern, however.  still my plans were still succeeding in making this a stressless egress from India.

The Great Escape continues...

ESCAPE PLAN

Sun Tzu said that every battle is won before it is fought.  Ringing true in my own heart, I wanted to exercise this wisdom.

Of course, not all who read Mr. Tzu's wisdom are considered worthy representatives thereof.

So, after last weekend's Olympic performance in the New Delhi airport, I kept thinking, "Perhaps I should re-think my exit strategy."  My flight out of here is on Saturday the 7th of May, the plane leaving Bangalore at 6:10 in the morning.  It arrives in Delhi 2.5 hours later where I have a 2h 10m layover until my next flight.  Thus, in the space of that 2h 10m layover, I have to first arrive on time, quickly deplane, exit the secure areas, get my bag without significant delay, go to the check-in counter, check my bag, go through border control, go through security, become once again infuriated behind the human plaque on the moving walkway, then find the gate and board my next flight – all in just a little over 2 hours.

Stand right, walk left.  A more complicated, hard-to-understand rule has yet to be invented by mortal or deity alike.

Two hours and ten minutes.  It should be enough time if I focus, stress out, run and beg my way to the front of lines AND if everything goes perfectly well.

Yeah.

Incidentally, a group of the brightest scientists pulled from across many disciplines were recently pulled together for a government-funded study on probability theory.  (Ok, this is a slight twist of the truth.  The government funding was the PowerBall Lottery.  The scientists were all hopeful purchasers of lottery tickets.  And the results of this study are found on the internet unattached to the actual scientist names.  I think that's what they call peer review these days, so it is totally legitimate.)

This esteemed group of well-educated losers concluded the following:

1. You have a 1 in 74,817,414 chance of dying from a meteor strike.  (Coincidentally you have 74,817,414 to 1 odds that you will be severely inconvenienced due to a European transportation industry strike at some point in your life.  Theoretical physicists call this "supersymmetry.")
2. Your odds of being murdered during a trip to the Grand Canyon in the USA are 1 in 8,156,000.  Most people know this intuitively.  This is why most of you have never visited the Grand Canyon.  Holes rarely turn out for the best.
3. You have a 1 in 2,215,900 chance of dying from chronic constipation.  As is the case with many important mathematical revelations, the group of scientists did not come to this conclusion together, but rather this was the discovery of one of the brighter individuals in their cadre.  Sadly, he is not credited with this calculation because another scientist took credit for this discovery, having found it scrawled on the wall of the bathroom stall where the brighter man spent an unusual amount of time before unexpectedly passing away.
4. A typical person is likely to be struck by lightning at some point in his or her life with odds of 1 in 1,101,000 against.  Ben Franklin, being an out-of-the-box thinker, has suggested some ways to improve your odds for those who deem themselves in need of better luck.
5. You have a 1 in 7 chance of being disabled, disfigured or killed by a parasite.  I would like to point out that coincidentally 1 out of every 6 people in the world live in India.  Statistically 9 out of 10 germophobes will find this to be scary.  The 10th person spells it germAphobe and so was not eligible to participate in this study.

There was one additional probability this group was to calculate but was unable to do so when the field expert collecting data for this topic failed to catch a connecting flight and make it to the workshop on time.  Ironically the topic of this calculation was the odds of missing a connecting flight due to the fact that people will stand on both the left and right side of moving walkways in airports.

Eleven out of ten of those people will consider themselves as having "above average" intelligence.

So instead of creating material for yet another blog entry detailing a stressful airport connection, I conclude that it would be worth calling the airline (India Air) and ask what it would cost me to get on a flight Friday evening and stay the night in Delhi instead of doing it all Saturday morning.  I assume that this would result in a more relaxed, low-stress entry into the airport for my Shanghai flight late Saturday morning.

A quick look at their web site allows me to verify that there is indeed a flight @ 9:20pm Friday that gets me into New Delhi @ 11:55pm.  It's late but that's not a big deal.  I can sleep in a little since my Shanghai flight leaves at 11:40am the next day.

Unfortunately, for reasons not given me on their web site, I cannot make the change online, so I call the airline, prepared to be put on hold for long and anxious minutes.  Surprisingly there is no wait time and within mere seconds I find myself talking either to a human being or a sufficiently advanced intelligent machine.  It did not ask if I knew Sarah Conner, and so I regrettably must conclude it was a human being.  Since I don't like being boxed into conventional options, I therefore reserve the right to suspect extraterrestrials exercising a slow conquest of Earth through phone support centers.

Everyone knows Dell's technical support fell to the first wave of this invasion a decade or so ago.

For now, however, let's assume this was a human.  It's what they want us to think.

This immediate connection to humanity is in contradiction to universal airline policy (keep the customer as frustrated and helpless as possible), and so I am suspicious.  Nonetheless, I describe my request to the airline guy and he seems to understand on the first attempt, and then says he has a few questions he needs to ask to verify my identity and my eligibility to make the change.

Ok, I can accept that.

Fortunately I am not in a rush, doing this late evening before heading off to bed.  It takes 30 minutes of repeated cycles of questions, answers and being put on hold while the airline guy verifies information, updates certain data and executes various tasks before I am confirmed eligible to switch my flight.

I imagine that what is really going on is much the same tactic as you would experience going to a car dealer to purchase a car.  Everything you say or do will result in the salesman's need to "talk it over with my manager."  This manager is always in plain sight sitting in an elevated platform where, like Zeus presiding in Olympus, he can be approached on your behalf only by qualified sales priests and priestesses.  You are able to watch the intense discussion between salesman and manager, but are unable to hear what they actually discuss.  The manager's brow furrows and you feel despair.  The salesman's arm begins wild gesticulations and you feel hope.  A shake of the manager's head is able to stir up butterflies lying otherwise dormant in your digestive tract.

This is an ancient game, and the point of this tactic is quite clear: build anxiety and fear.  Put the customer (or, in my case, the caller) on the defensive, believing that at any point something might go wrong, and it will be only you (the salesperson, the phone operator) who can rescue the situation on their behalf.

And so when the airline guy tells me that there is going to be a penalty for rescheduling and in addition to that there is a difference in the price of the flight, I get a little worried.  I start to think to myself, "how much is removing that stress from my departure worth to me?  $200?  $300?  Maybe as high as $400?"

“Mr. Hamilton, the penalty for changing your non-refundable flight fare is going to cost you five thousand, five hundred…”

My heart sinks.  I’m not that desperate and certainly not that rich to pay $5500 to avoid a little exercise.

That's right. You know how it feels.

But the airline guy on the phone isn't done talking.  He continues, “…five thousand, five hundred rupees.  And the difference in flight costs will add another 100 rupees to your charge for a total of 5,600 rupees.”

I reply only with stunned silence as the gears turn slowly in my head, processing that last extra bit of critical information.  Fortunately I am prepared for this contingency.  I have Google all cued up to convert rupees to USD.  I begin to feed this new data into Google.

Airline guy: "I am very sorry, sir."

This change was going to cost me a whopping $84.31 to make this change.  I know that this is nothing to sneeze at but compared to the damage I would incur running through the airport with a stressed-out heart beating frantically against hope to keep me alive long enough to get to the plane on time, this cost seemed more than sufficiently compensated by the return on that investment.

I clear my throat and, in my best Captain Picard imitation tell him to “Make it so,”  He acknowledges the order with a complete absence of trekkie panache and puts me on hold to make the changes.  For all I know he had to go discuss it with his manager.

Being on hold at this point is stressful.  There is music while I’m on hold that scientists assert is supposed to reduce the stress of those listening but no one knows where those scientists are today because they are all dead and the government is covering it up.  But I digress.

This could still all fall apart.  I could become disconnected, leaving my flight change request in a state of quantum uncertainty.  He could irrevocably cancel my current flights and not be able to restore them, stranding me here in Bangalore to become that 7th person in the statistic mentioned above where I'll be disabled, disfigured or killed by a parasite.

Five minutes never seemed longer than this, but in the end, I score success, and even verify the changes online before letting the airline guy off the call.

I love it when a plan comes together.

BEEF: IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER... AGAIN

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  When in India, use extreme caution.

India is predictably scary to the germophobic, spoiled American.  A prudent Google search on preparing for a trip to India will quickly land you on pages describing what vaccinations and medications you should obtain prior to arriving in India and what things to avoid such as biting your nails, breaching the sanctity of your dermal protection layer (don’t get a scrape!) and of course drinking the water.  This last nugget of wisdom includes warnings about hidden dangers such as ice in your drinks, washed fruit, and of course all the dangers of taking a shower using water you don’t want to get in your mouth, eyes or open cuts.

And then of course there is the food.

Generally any food, if prepared correctly, has sufficiently eradicated its microbial contents to warrant consumption by weak systems such as mine.  However, when in addition to being “concerned” about keeping the germs at bay one is also manically conservative on choices of cuisine, complications arise in maintaining a steady and healthy diet in the land where unwashed hands prepare meals in converted animal stalls for roadside distribution without recourse from public health code enforcement.  And while it is reasonable to assume that not all food in India is prepared this way, let's just say that I cannot confidently identify what has and has not been through a modicum of sanitary preparation.

The Hamilton Uncertainty Principle states that one's hands are both washed and unwashed until observed as being washed.

Even when sanitary preparation can be reasonably assured, there is still the open question one such as I wants desperately to ask at each meal: "what the hell is that?!?!"

So you can imagine my sense of anticipation having heard before I came to the Leela that my American comrades had visited there for lunch last year and found there to be a cheeseburger that rivaled those found in restaurants in the States.

And even more exciting: the Leela has several restaurants, including an Italian restaurant (which apparently one must have a formal jacket to enter, so I did not enter), an authentic Indian restaurant, and one in which a wide variety of choices is available including western dishes.

My first evening there at the Leela has me questing for said cheeseburger.  After taking the long walk from my room to the elevators and into the lobby, I find a helpful staff member (in truth he finds me first!) whom I ask where I can find the restaurants.

“What kind of food would you like?” I am asked.

“Something in the western food category,” I explain.

“I would like to suggest you try our Indian restaurant.  It is very good.”  Ah.  He is a negotiator.  Two can play at that game.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” I lie.  “Today I’m hungry for some western food.”  Stephen Covey would consider this an “I win, you lose” mentality.  Stephen Covey can eat my curry.

The man is not a quitter.  “Sir, our Indian restaurant is very good.  I think you will like it.”

It is time now to be firm.  “No, thank you.  I am in the mood for something familiar.”  I attach a look to my words which is intended to signal the seriousness of the situation.

Scientists say that 80% of communication is through non-verbal clues and signals.

Relenting, in suspiciously quiet surrender he showed me the restaurant where the cowardly American tourists who hide from the culture they are visiting go to eat in shame.

The menu for this restaurant is extensive, and in my defense there are some Indian choices to be found therein.  I could not tell you what they are since I only know about those pages so that I can more easily skip over them in future perusals.  I could also have selected various known substances including crab cakes, fish, salads and various breads.  But what catches my eye are two choices.  The Leela Cheeseburger, and the Beef Tenderloin.

Today feels like a cheeseburger day, and so I let my waiter know.

It turns out to be a good cheeseburger, and comes with fries untainted by Indian spices.  I am pleased.

Now, it is not lost on me that the majority of Hindus do not eat beef.  They abstain, not because of concerns over health or nutrition or melting polar ice caps, but because to them cows are sacred.  In fact, cows are worshipped by a significant percentage of a significant percentage of the world population.

Beef: It's what they worship.

And so when it comes down to it, apparently I'm a very insensitive man.  For the next 6 nights, I will call for room service (private dining is what they call it here) and the conversation will go something like this:

"Yes, hello Mr. Hamilton!  What will you be having for dinner tonight?"

"Um, yeah.  Hi.  You worship cows, right?  Yeah, I'll have one of those. "

Ok, no, I didn’t actually say that - not in so many words. But once again I'll remind you that 80% of what we communicate is in the non-verbal cues we send.  Actions speak louder than words.  Consistent actions even louder still.

And I sent quite a consistent message.

Every night.

But to be fair, I did not eat the cheeseburger every night I was there.

One night I had the beef tenderloin.

HER NAME IS LEELA

My last experience here in Bangalore was an impressionist painting of germophobic challenges framed by my stay at the Moldy Orchid (called The Royal Orchid by its friends and family).

But I think it was Pythagoras who pointed out that, like triangles, not all hotels are created equal.

And so when booking this trip, it was with quite some trepidation that I considered hotel options.  The Musty Orchid is recommended because (a) it is walking distance to the office (with no limb-threatening traffic issues), and (b) it is inexpensive and thereby fits the SAP travel policy to which I am pressured to comply.

After my first night there in October, I clearly recall pricing out other hotels and being both tempted by and dismayed by the much higher room rates of the Leela Palace.  Looking at their web site it is difficult to imagine that staying there is anything less than a resort for the rich and famous at an exclusive tropical paradise.

So you can imagine by joy when, using the SAP travel planning tool, I saw that the Leela Palace now has SAP-negotiated rates!  It is still more expensive than the Mildewed Orchid, but irrelevantly so.

So let me now provide some pictorial evidence to substantiate the claim I'm making that Leela Palace is a step up from the Withering Orchid.

Let’s start with the lobby.

Welcome to the Royal Orchid.

Allow me to make some observations with the clarity of hindsight.

First, there is the nice, shiny floor.  This first sets the impression of a nice, clean establishment that cares for the facility as though it were a royal residence.  But sometimes things are too clean and overly-polished for a reason.  Bait-and-switch comes to mind.  It is my contention now that this is probably the cleanest part of the building and the floors are kept super-polished so that they are too slippery for the rats to set foot on and thereby scare away unsuspecting clientele.

Second, note the statue.  Like any good work of art, empathize with it.  Feel its oppression, its desperation, its pathetic plight of escape.  Here we have, embodied in materials too suspicious-looking to describe, the eventual fate of all who stay here at this hotel.  Dirty, moldy, bent over from coughing and hacking too long due to the mildewed air of the rooms and the cesspool stench of the river right outside the hotel, this broken soul warns to all who enter to abandon hope.  All hope.

Third, you will note the impressive absence of staff waiting to greet all who enter.  Now, I personally do not care one way or the other for hotel greetings, but as you will see, this is in stark contrast to Leela.  But let’s not ignore what IS there in that picture.  There is a hotel guest sitting in the faded sofa most likely acquired from a curbside nearby, looking dazed and vacant.  This poor soul lost the struggle to escape unscathed, and to this day may still be there.  Finally there is the security guard pacing outside.  I admit this guy was very friendly and always seemed glad to see me, but in retrospect I must question whether his gladness was more about the fact that every time he saw me I still had some spark of life remaining in my eyes.

The Leela, on the other hand, is a welcoming environment.

This isn't even the lobby.

From the moment you disembark from the car, there are folks to help you with luggage, find your way, point out the bar, the attached mall, and make sure you have enough water.  The area outside the lobby entrance is pristinely clean and detailed in marble flooring, columns, ceiling décor and more.

Entering the Leela Palace is facilitated by pretty young women and handsome young men who clasp their hands and bow respectfully, indicating that here you are king, and they are but humble servants.

Reading the awe on your face, they recognize that you are just arriving and usher you to the desk for check-in.  Being a seasoned traveler I was prepared to stand at that desk like a beggar seeking for shelter.

Not so fast, weary traveller.

Only suckers stand at the check-in counter waiting to be processed.  I was shown a nice comfortable seat on one of the couches in the lobby, and my passport and paperwork taken to be processed.

Score: Leela 1, Orchid 0.

After check-in one must find one’s room, which involves navigating various elevators and hallways.  Again this provides material for a comparative analysis.

The Contaminated Orchid's hallway to my room.

I admit the quality of the photo isn’t great – my smartphone doesn’t stabilize well when taking pictures while walking.  Why not stop and get a clearer picture, you ask?  One does not stop walking in this hotel, as anything standing still is a target for varmints and critters.

Notice that this hallway is narrow and bland, receding into a light which I believe is the crossover point between this world and the next.  Why here in this hotel?

Vultures gather where death abounds, my friend.

Now in the Leela, it is a bit different.

As the bellman took my bag and ushered me to the elevator, he noted my room number and told me with a friendly, apologetic smile that I had a long walk ahead of me.  Indeed, he was not kidding.  It probably takes between one and two minutes to walk at a brisk pace between my room and the elevators.  But that walk is day vs. night compared to the Orchid.

One of three hallways leading to my room.

Well lit, spacious, and decorated and architected again like you’re in a palace.  Well done, Leela.  The score is now 2-0 in favor of Leela.

Now, we compare the rooms.  First, the Wilting Orchid.

The entrance, designed to make first impressions.

The first impression one gets is a solid “meh” – if you ignore the stench.

Orchid gets points for dual toilet paper rolls, knowing that in India the risk of needing an emergency supply is at elevated levels.

Crooked pictures above the bed, indicating the quality of sleep one will get.

Pillows stacked like corpses.  Foreshadowing?

"Like new.,"

The view looking out of my window.

Effective not so much at cooling, but at mildewing.

From the Martha Stewart Collection: Decorative Mildew.  (Look closely - you'll see it.)

A stay at The Grimy Orchid is a gift that keeps on giving.

I think that should about do it.  The Grimy Orchid has set the standard.  Defined the yardstick.  Set the bar, it did.

And now for the contender: the Leela Palace.

The "foyer" for my Leela Palace room.

Indeed, the first impression is a good one here.

This is in the foyer, there in case you get tired from the long walk into the room or want to stop and make up your face before going out.

Note the pillows: at the ready, standing at attention.  Not at all like stacked corpses.

The contrast to the sofa in the Nasty Orchid is self-evident.

Not just an elegant workplace, but here I can interview potential butlers.

Granite?  Marble?  Both?  Does it matter?

Granted, no “dual dispenser” like the Greasy Orchid, but note the extra roll nicely wrapped like a present!

The window here has blinds I can open and shut with a switch on the wall.

The view upon stepping out onto my room's balcony.

Updated score: Leela 10, Orchid 0.  (Extra points just for being so nice.)

And then there’s the level of attentive service one receives at the Leela.  The staff here like to be helpful.  Very helpful.  In fact at all times they are actively concerned about whether I’m happy with the stay.

They want to bring you to your room.  They want to carry your luggage to the room.  They want to clean your room every morning, then again in the evening.  They want to turn down your bed at night.  They want to know whether you have enough towels.  Enough cookies.  Enough bottles of water.  They want to know that you are enjoying your room.  They want to deliver your food you ordered or the laundry you had them do.

All that is nice, and they do it with a smile.

BUT...

First, I have no idea how to tip these guys.  The porter who brought my luggage up refused a tip with a facial expression that suggested he was offended that I would offer one.  I'm not sure if it was because it was not worth the energy to come over and get the whopping 10 rupee note I was about to hand him (which is $0.15 – a fact I failed to pre-calculate and so was blindly thinking he’d benefit from my generosity), or just doesn't want or need tips.  I had tried with another guy to give him 20 rupees, thinking that I must be very generous, and he took it but it didn't seem to phase him.  I guess not with that exchange rate. Of course, later when I looked at the exchange rate and figured out how much I must have been insulting these guys, I did feel pretty bad, but then apparently tipping is not expected in India.  This is actually not universally true, as a future chapter in my saga will illustrate.

Second, these guys have an uncanny knack for coming when I'm not immediately able to open the door.  When I first arrived, I had stripped down to nothing and was about to step in the shower.  The room’s doorbell rings.  This time it was to ask if I had enough water and towels.  Another couple of times I was on the toilet, only to find after a panicked hurry-and-finish-and-get-decent-to-open-the-door that they wanted to know if I had enough fresh fruit.  The first night I was in my skivvies (it is hot here even in the room, where it is relatively cool!) lying on the bed reading before I was gonna sleep and they wanted to come in and turn down the bed.

I'm now afraid to go to bed, to the bathroom, shower - anything that puts me in a panic to re-clothe myself sufficiently to let them do what they want to do.

The last thing I should note is that my first evening there I unpacked everything and found out that some damage occurred to my luggage contents in coming here to India.  Of all the things that could have broken – my laptop, my headset, my Bluetooth speaker, my personal USB-powered fan – what actually suffered damage was something far more valuable.

My Purell hand sanitizer no longer dispenses its viral-killing, life-preserving nectar.

I'm doomed.

WHY IS MY RIGHT LEG GETTING TIRED?

While getting myself to Bangalore has so far seemed to be a herculean task, getting from the Bangalore airport to the hotel was still a challenge ahead of me.

The last time I was here, I had my ordeal with the shifty taxi driver impersonators and through my naive trust in the indigenous of India got myself ripped off and scared senseless as I was led to a suspicious car, intimidated by a luggage lad who could not blink his eyes into paying a gratuity, and then transported into unknown provinces, scared I was being kidnapped and that I would be soon sold into slavery.  "Hut Boy" they would call me.  And every night, after putting the cow in the garage and clearing the monkey turds from the stoop, as I'd go to lie down on my rock, I'd hear "Good night Scoot.  Good work.  Sleep well.  I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

So now, having learned the tricks of the wiley non-taxi-driver airport posers, I exited the airport with confidence, saying "No" to this one, "No" to that one, and just giving the international "talk to the hand" sign language to the other.

I pity the fool who doesn't say no!

Feeling like a pro, I sauntered out of the airport and into the sultry evening air of Bangalore and queue up for a cab in the easily-found "taxi" area.  Like a queued pig in line for the slaughter, I too move with the herd, choosing optimism as a blatant mockery of fate.

Only over here I think they might call it karma.

And as karma, fate and chance would have it, I soon find myself in a cab, my bag in the back, and we're on our way to the hotel.

Except we're not.

Apparently we need to put some fuel in the car.  This would ordinarily roll off my back like so much acid off a duck's, but there's a lot of suspicious activity going on around the car while it is being fueled.  There are some dudes standing around a motorcycle as it is getting juiced up.  Nothing too odd about that, although the dangling, smoking sticks of potential energy of flaming death hanging from their fingers as they stand in the cloud of petrol fumes does put a slight twinge of anticipation into the experience.

Then there is the kid with the bucket.  He is walking here, there, to, fro, carrying the bucket and not really doing much with it.  As he approaches the car, I try and shrink down and pretend to be invisible, lest he decide I might pay for a window washing or need my teeth cleaned.  But then he veers off, once again following his unfathomable path.

Soon the driver returns, cranks up the ol' engine, and pulls out.

And NOW we're on our way to the hotel.

Except we're still not - not quite.

Since it is the middle of the afternoon - well before the end of the workday - traffic is terrible.

It was a lot like this, only worse.  Really.

It takes us about 2 hours to get to the hotel where it should have taken about 30-40 minutes.  All the while my driver is getting frustrated, throwing his hands into the air, saying various words that probably border on the obscene, and then giving up and taking alternate routes.  I am curious to know if we would have arrived earlier had he stayed on the primary route, but now I'll never know.

I'm sure that staying on the original route would have resulted in one less adventure, however.

With each new alternative route selected, he puts the petal to the metal and tries to make up for lost time.  He's a pro, too, exercising the skills only people who survive learning to drive in India can acquire.

Keeping the lane divider right in the middle of the car, weaving to and fro through mopeds, motorcycles, rickshaws, cars, trucks, you name it, he's violating at least 12 laws of physics any given minute.  The car is in a constant state of acceleration or deceleration with no steady state.  Certain death is surrounds us in a baffling cacophony of horns, bells, toodles and shouts.

When we're not tailgating, it is because we're slow enough that mopeds, rickshaws, pedestrians and other miscellanea are swarming around us like rats fleeing the Titanic.

When we're not jammed up with everyone else, we're tailgating someone or something, beeping and swerving as they mosey to one side or another.  And by tailgating I don't mean like that guy who was "on your bumper" when you were driving on route 95 the other day.  In India, you get close enough to test for the Casimir effect.

You know what I mean.  It's that physical force arising from a quantized field between two uncharged plates that can produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time that could destabilize a wormhole to allow faster than light travel.  Duh.

It isn't long before I realize that my right leg is starting to ache.  It's getting tired!

Turns out there is no brake pedal in the back seat of the taxi, and the continued pressure of trying to push my right leg through the floor to activate the brakes has tired my leg out to the point that my calf is starting to cramp!

You laugh, but you weren't there, man.  You weren't there.

In fact, I feel I am justified.  The taxi driver apparently has some device monitoring his speed and location.  Every time he gets going and starts drafting various vehicular facsimile at speeds that would stymie a fighter pilot, a voice announces: "Please slow down.  You are exceeding the speed limit.  Please slow down.  You are exceeding the speed limit."  At first I could not figure out why the driver would have this device but never actually slow down until he had to.  But then I figured it out.

This isn't a warning.  It's praise.

Finally pulling into the hotel from the main road is like escaping from a raging river full of piranha and climbing out onto a nice, calm shore.  The frenzy of vehicles is left behind, and we pull up to a set of guards pushing a metal gate in our way.

Time for the bomb check!

Using a giant dental mirror they check the undercarriage of the car, go through the trunk, and then pass us through.  And suddenly I'm in the lap of luxury.

I did not get a picture of the guys at the hotel, other than the fact that the uniform was different, plus the guy was different, and the car was different, it was the same.