FEBRUARY 21, 2007

Imperial Hotel, Delhi
The group of fourteen participants had swapped a few emails in the days before departing to India, and we made a loose plan, since “official” activities wouldn’t begin until the next morning, to meet casually for dinner on our first night in the Imperial Hotel. Those who felt like it and weren’t wiped out with jet lag would find each other in the lobby and go off to find a place to eat.

I went downstairs to the opulent lobby and pretty quickly found Barry (A mediator/negotiator from Detroit, brilliantly irreverent and curmudgeonly and likable from the get-go. Prophetic really, since Barry became my touchstone and don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously-you-ass reminder throughout the trip, whose company I was always grateful to have. Sadly, I still tended to take myself quite seriously, at least for the first several days, and was a know-it-all, pompous ass). Barry and I did a few brief introductions as we waited and looked around for anyone else looking like they might be waiting to meet up with strangers. Barry’s wife, Susan, was upstairs trying to shake off the flight and rally her energy for dinner. (Susan is a therapist and I also adored her right off the bat. She is also pretty irreverent and down-to-earth. These two let me glom onto them pretty quickly and became like siblings to me.) Many folks just arrived in the very early morning hours of this day and others had been in town for a day. I think I had been around the longest, at another hotel and in India for five days before transferring here.

We found, sitting on the schmancy settees and sofas of a side lobby, a small group of women who could very well have been horse-folk. Barry and I knew there was only one other guy on the trip, and a total of eleven women, so our bet was pretty sure. We all stood around and chatted, finally deciding instead of venturing into the crazy and hot city, to just adjourn to one of the hotel’s bars for cocktails and then go to another for dinner. Incredible relief washed over me when I realized cocktails were in order for all. Scary that a drink can feel like such a ground leveler, but I find it is, and also just loosens folks up in awkward and foreign circumstances (and nothing is more awkward or foreign than being in hyper luxury in India)

Some folks weren’t able to join us, but we had a pretty good turnout—maybe half of the eventual group. Rebecca 24-year-old Maryland horsewoman on her “gap year” after fleeing her cushy job at Morgan Stanley. She moved from Manhattan to a horse farm and lives over the barn. She is doing our three weeks in India, then on to Thailand to tour with her boyfriend—whose tenure in her life seemed of a limited duration—then to Sri Lanka to work at an elephant orphanage, then she hits an excursion to the Advanced Base Camp of Mount Everest, then back to India to explore the south before Delhi and home to facilitate her move to Los Angeles and law school. I kind of hate her since she seems to have grabbed so much of what was supposed to be MY life of adventure, Marianne from Dublin, Ireland, who at first strikes me as just the most pleasant soul whose accent I envy, and I later discover, with delight, that she has a wicked and mischievous sense of humor and is remarkably quick to laugh. She was always good for stirring up mischief. Lisa is a stunning woman right off the cover of an equitation magazine—she is the ideal of what everyone imagines a true equestrian would be. Long blond hair, fabulous Los Angeles/Bel Air (I think) lifestyle, horses, dressage competitor, great photographer, and so easy to laugh. She is the picture of grace in a crowd and so easy to be around. Lynn is the earth mother to all of us, She has two fabulous Arabian horses of her own in Connecticut less than an hour from me. She is a singer, quick to laugh, seems like she might get scandalized easily but not a chance. She exudes such a comforting maternal vibe and just makes me feel good to be around. Candy is a hoot. I sit near her at the end of the table and am thrilled at the choice of seats the first night. She cracks me up. She is the first to have gotten in touch with us all electronically. Her humor is dry and hysterical in her proper British accent, making sarcastic asides here and there, and always game for anything. We learn that she lives only about 20 minutes from me, and I can tell you now, afterward, that that makes me a lucky man. Bob and I have hung out with her at her beautiful home on a lake, and Bob adores her almost as much as I.

Dinner is nice as we begin the long unwinding of our personal stories and begin to chip away at the first layer of politeness and courtesy that initially stand in the way of getting to know one another…all this while we are remarkably indecisive about what to order. The food is Hotel-nice…pretty tasty if overpriced and dulled down for foreign palates. I had already discovered the enormous bottles of Kingfisher beer, a locally brewed very pale beer that goes well with spicy foods. I think most of us, overall, wished that the food we ate was always more spicy than it was, but I’m sure most travelers request mildness.