November 7 - Departure

Today is my last day in India and I am so thankful to Western Union and to my gracious hosts at Conserve India for my time here. Conserve India has been more than generous to me and I am impressed with all they are doing to help the poor in Delhi. It has been inspiring and an honor to spend time with a business with such an incredible purpose to provide the people in the slum with educational, skills training, and employment opportunities. I only hope I was able to help them in some small way and that I can continue to do so.  The needs in India are staggering and can be overwhelming, but it is encouraging to see such good people working to change things for the better, one individual at a time.  My experience in India has given me new perspective on the many blessings in my life, and has expanded my understanding of the world economy and culture, and of how business can walk hand-in-hand with social change.  Thanks again Western Union and Conserve India!

View of sunset from Conserve balcony

November 5 - Delhi

I spent the last few days working, which has included discussions regarding a potential joint venture between Conserve India and Food Ladder Australia.  Food Ladder makes small, sustainable greenhouse systems that can be used by individuals or communities to grow vegetables, and they would like to work with Conserve India to produce the systems at Conserve’s factory.  The systems could then be distributed for use in Delhi’s slums to provide an affordable food source.  Conserve India and Food Ladder have had preliminary discussions and will meet again later this month, so I put together talking points to help the two parties begin to work out the details of their collaboration. 

 

Anita also took me to the Kahn Market in Delhi, which has many high-end shops and familiar Western brands.  She said now I have seen both sides of Delhi, from the slums to the Kahn Market.  She said she likes to walk around the Kahn Market when the problems in the slum begin to overwhelm her so that she can remind herself that India continues to make progress.  She noted that some of this progress includes fresh vegetables in the market that are often imported from other countries, which was unheard of in the past.  She also said that a growing trend in the last 5-6 years is Christmas parties where turkey is served, and that turkey farms are starting to proliferate.  A picture of part of the Kahn Market is below.

 

 

October 31 - November 2 Lucknow

October 31 – To Lucknow

 

I spent the day working from the hotel, but the day wasn’t without adventure as I flew to Lucknow that evening to meet with some friends from Denver also visiting India.  It was an experience being the only foreigner on a domestic flight.

 

Before I left my hotel in Delhi, I had some clothes laundered.  They came back folded nicely, but very damp, and I needed them dry because I was leaving shortly to Lucknow.  So, I resorted to drying them with the hair dryer.  That went reasonably well, and the hair dryer held up until I had one sock left, and then quit.  I thought it would be too weird if a bald man went to the front desk asking for a new hair dryer, so I let the last sock air dry. 

 

I got to Lucknow late in the evening safe and sound and it was great to see some friends from home.  Here is the front of the hotel in Lucknow.

 

November 1 – Lucknow

 

We spent the day touring Lucknow.  At one stop, one of my American friends took a mis-step into the gutter running alongside the street.  Trust me, not where you want to step.  This brought the whole neighborhood out to watch from their doorways, balconies, and rooftops with concerned looks.  Here is a shot of the clean-up effort.

 

During the day, a few members of the group received temporary tattoos, I believe called “Henna.”  The artist amazingly produced this in less than 10 minutes. 

 

I saw my first wild mongoose in Lucknow, but it bolted away before I could get a picture.  Not surprisingly, wherever mongooses are present, there are no snakes.

 

After lunch, we headed to the market.  All kinds of people and merchants were everywhere and we felt quite foreign.  But, we attended to our shopping like everyone else with no more than a few thousand curious stares. 

 

We then moved on to Ambedkar Park, otherwise known as the “Elephant Park,” built from 1995-2007 by the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (the state in which Lucknow sits).  It is 107 acres of monuments and ornate structures, and the entire floor is solid granite, like the countertops in many American homes.  Think of it – 107 acres of granite flooring.  It also has about 50 elephants, each 15-20 feet high carved out of a solid block of marble.  I didn’t know marble came in elephant-sized chunks.  Ten thousand people worked on it every day during its construction.  The pictures do not do it justice, but here are a few.

Next, we went to a nice restaurant for some great Indian food and then it was back to the Maple Leaf Hotel for some sleep.

 

November 2 – Back to Delhi

 

The next afternoon, I headed back to the airport after dropping my friends off at the train station.  They were heading to Agra to tour the Taj Majal, and then go back to Denver on Tuesday.  The train station was extremely busy and we wound our way through the crowd with luggage for several hundred yards before reaching their car.  Because they booked their tickets early, they would have a place to sit for the 6-hour, 230-mile journey.  Booking last minute would have meant standing room only.  The cars are so crowded that people stand and sit on the steps in the doorways, which are not closed.  People even cling to the handrails on the outside of the train adjacent to the doors, sometimes with only enough room for one foot at a time on the steps.  Amazingly, some of the trips can take a couple of days, and so people often ride this way for hours and hours.

 

The train station

At the airport, I obtained my boarding pass and went through security.  My boarding pass had Gate 4 printed on it, but a few minutes before boarding time, they switched the flight to Gate 5.  After a rough landing in Delhi where we seemed to careen down the runway for a few seconds, we exited onto the tarmac and got on a bus to take us to the terminal.  Apparently, we had landed at the international terminal although our flight was domestic.  All this made me think again about how things in India seldom turn out how I expect, from gate changes at the airport, to wet laundry, to unexpected stops on tours, to standing for hours on the train, to leaky showers, to ants in the bathroom.  But those are small things. Then there are the big issues of millions living on one or two meals a day at best and without consistent access to basics like electricity, running water, housing, education, and medical services. It is an environment that forces you to “expect the unexpected” and be adaptable and flexible on a moment-by-moment basis, and to think of solutions to problems that you didn’t know existed just a few minutes before.

 

Thursday, October 30 - Conserve India School

Today, Anita took me back to the factory and then to the Conserve India School and adjacent slum.

 

The school building and Anita standing at the gate.

 

Students in the school.

 

The students in the school seem quite well and are learning English along with many other subjects.  The school has been wired to receive electricity, but power is spotty.  Recently, a donor from the Netherlands provided funds to install solar panels, and they were just put in yesterday.

 

There is still some work to be done on them, but they should provide a stable power source for lighting and possibly to run computers (if the school can acquire some).

  

The school is in a slum.  Here is a view from the school roof to the living quarters next door.

Other shots of the slum.

 

Hundreds of millions live this way in India.  No running water, no toilet, no electricity.  The fields nearby serve as the restroom, which is particularly difficult and dangerous at night for the girls.  Most in the slum have not held a pen or a pencil, or a pair of scissors.  The kids do not have toys or games.  Conserve India seeks to provide job training, and so they must start with the very basics.  Interestingly, many have cell phones, but charging them is difficult.  Anita said in this slum, a local man charges 10-20 rupees (around 25 to 30 cents US) for people to charge their phones – very expensive for the people here.  Anita may be able to use the new solar panels to help with that. 

 

At least three times in the last twenty years, Anita has seen the slum destroyed and the people moved.  She has relocated the school a few times because of it.  The police came at night and loaded the people into trucks – sixty into a truck that should hold no more than twenty.  The people could only take what they could hold in their hands.  Children, the elderly, pregnant women, and all others were loaded up, taken to a field farther from the city, and dumped out.  The slum was leveled.  The people who had virtually nothing had even less to start over with. 

 

The slum is difficult to fathom.  Although I don’t know everything about the United States, I can’t believe anyone there today is born into a situation like the slum.  It reaches the depths of poverty and is overwhelming in its enormity.  It’s staggering, but I believe we should all seek to help in some way, no matter how small, and Conserve India is one way to do it.  Anita is putting together a list of items needed at the school.

 

On the ride back into Delhi, I continued to marvel at the population density.  Delhi is estimated to have about 30,000 people per square mile.  It’s similar to when a crowd gets out of a major sporting event, except it’s everywhere, all the time, on every main thoroughfare and every side street.  New York City is comparable, but it lacks the uncountable motorcycles, cows, carts, bicycles, and auto-rickshaws mixed in among the cars, busses, and trucks.  I didn’t manage to photograph it, but I saw five people on a single motorcycle today – three adults and two small children.  No helmets, no seatbelts, no car seats, nothing.  Then there’s the pollution.  Today’s paper said the air quality measured so poorly that people should not exercise outside.  Here are some photos from today’s commute.

 

Wednesday, October 29 - Taj Mahal

 

Yesterday, Anita told me they needed to work from their home office and that I should work at the hotel.  It was nice to have a day to work further on the Conserve India succession plan, and catch up on email and rest.  I also spent part of the day moving rooms due to ants in the bathroom and a leaky shower.

 

Today, they were going to work from home again, and Anita encouraged me to go sightseeing.  So, I booked a tour of the Taj Mahal.  A driver picked me up at the hotel at 6:00 a.m., and we started out into the early morning Delhi fog.  After a stop for gas, an unexplained stop in a neighborhood, and another twenty-minute stop only explained by “Okay, sir, paper check,” we were off into what I could only presume was the direction of Agra and the Taj Mahal.  At home in a familiar environment, I feel like I’m in control or at least I hold to that illusion.  But today, all I could think was “Ok God, I’m in your hands.”  They could take this clueless American anywhere.

 

We traveled for the next few hours through farmland mostly being worked by hand, with the occasional use of a tractor, donkey, cow, or camel.  I noticed the contrast in visibility from Colorado.

To illustrate, here is a typical Colorado sky.

 

And here is the Indian countryside.

 

I also noticed that many of the trucks have "horn please" painted on the back. Unlike in the US, apparently the polite thing to do is honk when you are passing someone. Mystery solved. 

We picked up my tour guide in Agra, and made our way through the traffic to the Taj Mahal. 

 

 

Monkeys on the roadside

The Taj was truly magnificent and worthy of being one of the wonders of the world.  My guide informed me that it was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the birth of their 14th child.  It took 20,000 workers 22 years to build it.  Frankly, that seemed fast to me.  It is made entirely of marble with precious stones inlaid into it.  Here are some photos:

 

 

After the Taj, the tour continued with some unsolicited stops at local merchants.   I learned more about how the Taj was built from the descendants of its workers.

 

 

Somewhat begrudgingly, I spent more than I had planned on some souvenirs knowing that I had paid way too much.  But, I felt better after a nice lunch.  The next pictures are for my daughter Sydney, who always asks me what I eat when I travel. 

 After lunch "mint"

 

 

We took some quick stops at the Red Fort and “Baby Taj,” and then I was ready to head back to Delhi. 

 

Red Fort

 

 

 

As we entered the city, I notice a girl walking in traffic at a stoplight.  She looked about 11 years old, the same age as my oldest daughter.  She wandered blankly from car to car to beg, and seemed almost too weak to raise her arm to tap on the glass.  I was no longer concerned with how much I had spent on souvenirs.