lessons learned.

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday (Monday): rickshaw drivers are not omniscient. Last night was a wild ride. The seven independents decided we were ready for our first venture into the city without a guide. We had three phones, a map and probably a smidge too much confidence. First lesson learned: never put all the phones in one rickshaw and all the women in the other. All the guys climbed into one rickshaw and took off, while we hopped in one with two drivers who didn’t speak a word of English. (Mistake number 2) We managed to stay with the other rickshaw for about an hour, but with the Indian pop blasting (a special treat for a group of girls, I think) and the drivers preoccupied with finding a good song, we soon lost the men and started to stop in random places on the busy Indian streets to ask for directions. (They asked; we just sat there, exchanging nervous glances.) After about two hours (hard to estimate time because none of us had watches either) we finally decided to just have them take us to a shopping center where we could find some English speakers with directions to food. After assuring these two (friendly) amateurs that we did not need them to wait for us while we shopped, we found some very nice FabIndia employees who directed us to a gorgeous restaurant. It was called “Our Place” and felt like a five star restaurant, dining in an open air garden glittering with lights in all the trees. The waiters not only brought the food, but continued to stand around and plate it for you whenever it looked like you were nearing a clean plate. I had two courses for six dollars (300 rupees) and it was incredible!

Getting home was much less of an adventure. We were discerning this time, and chose rickshaw drivers who spoke more than a smattering of English and who knew what we were talking about when we said “central university near Gachi Bowli”. We made it back in half the time, and after one more round of rate haggling, we staggered onto our bikes inside the gate and made our way back.

The best part of the story, however, was that it wasn’t even ten minutes after we’d arrived that the guys showed up, with an identical story; their rickshaw driver had gotten lost as well, they’d spent a good amount of time driving around looking for us, (we actually passed by each other at one point and both started yelling at the drivers to turn around) and then found a nice restaurant and headed back. So we opened a bottle of wine on the roof and toasted our first venture, deciding to try it again today.