While I was away:

I am back to Nanyuki after a wonderful two weeks break away from work. I have come back to find that KFC is in town as is Java House at the brand spanking new Cedar Mall with other tenants continuing their fit our work to open as soon as they are done. East or west home is always best they say.

There is also a new Gulf Energy petrol station at the junction to my house that almost made me miss my turn off that was under construction when I left but is now open for business, and they say that progress happens slowly in Africa!

My sojourn while I was on leave took me to New Delhi in India and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Both are the capital cities of their respective countries but they are as different as chalk from cheese. I studied in India but haven’t been there in almost 30 years so this was a nostalgic visit that brought memories flooding back of my student years despite New Delhi being hundreds of kilometers from Poona (or Pune) where I studied in the 1980’s.

We were a group of 31 men a majority being in their mid 40’s to late 50’s while the minority were in their 30’s and one gentleman in his late 70’s. It was a diverse group cobbled together by their love of golf and travel. Several in the group had been to India before either as students or visitors but for the majority it was their first time.

It has never been more difficult to travel to India than at present thanks to Prime Minister Modi’s unexpected decision a few weeks prior to our arrival to demonetize the INR 1,000.00 and INR 500.00 currency notes in a bid to tame black money and force those holding the cash in their mattresses to surrender it through the banking system in exchange for the new INR 2,000.00 notes. These two denominations represent almost 80% of the cash in circulation so in this country of 1.3 Billion people this was a logistical nightmare however you looked at it.

In addition no businesses were accepting these demonetized currency notes and as the ATM machines had not been programmed to accept the new notes the only place to exchange them was at the banks where unending queues of impatient Indians were the order of the day.

There was no respite for us tourists either and we were forced to endure a 3 hour queue at the few banks and exchange bureaus at the airport to convert the maximum allowed of the equivalent of $100.00 (INR 6,000.00 after taxes!!). It was at least a 7-10 minutes process per person something that would ordinarily take a minute at most in any other country thanks to the infamous Indian bureaucracy that I had forgotten about in the intervening 30 year period.

Our agony didn’t end there either as the hotels were not exchanging or accepting foreign currencies either as the priority was for the new currency notes to go through the commercial banking system to be available to the suffering local populace desperate to exchange their useless currency notes before they became worthless pieces of paper.

After one exhausted their INR 6,000.00 the only options left was to use your debit or credit card (when they worked) to settle your local transactions as well as do your shopping or in the alternative hope that someone among the group was willing to convert some USD into INR for you. Simple payments that we always take for granted to pay for your taxi fare, or a meal or a drink or make a tip now took on gargantuan proportions thanks to the cash crunch. Talk of having money in your pocket but being unable to use it?

One of our purposes of visiting New Delhi was to take advantage of the excellent medical facilities available in that country and undergo full medical check up’s and this we did at the very busy Apollo Indraprastha Hospital thankfully located quite close to our hotel. Theirs is a model of efficiency from the registration and reception right through the various stages of check up by various specialists including dentists, cardiologists, opticians, general practitioners, podiatrists, nutritionists, dieticians doctors that check your lung capacity, those that take chest XRAY’s a ECG readings to those that check your stress levels and so on.

The full spectrum of medical tests is carried out within a day efficiently managed by a squadron of pretty executives everyone carrying their personal files with their doctors reports which you submit at the end of the day for the final processing and then follow up visit a day or two later to see the various specialists who then discuss any issues with you. In and out in two days and with your sack of prescriptions in hand something that is likely to take several days here in Kenya and at a fraction of the cost to boot!!

Like any car that you take to the garage that always has an issue that needs repairing we all had medical issues that were revealed to us through the plethora of tests that we underwent and we were each given sage advise by the doctors and specialists along with strict instructions for diet change and exercise for those that were considered overweight by the dietician and nutritionist.

The highlight of the visit to India however was a visit to the Taj Mahal located in Agra the journey taken aboard the Gatiman Express train that takes 1 hour 50 minutes to cover the 225 kilometers distance. The story of the Taj Mahal is a story well documented so I will not dwell on the details but it covers an area of 94 acres and for a building well over 350 years it is in remarkably good condition and a labor of love as we found out. The postcard pictures don’t quite capture the architectural beauty of this wonder of the world and is a must visit for anyone touring India if for nothing else to marvel at the intricate craftsmanship and beautiful lawns of the well landscaped gardens.

(To be continued)