Well. You could say that we’ve had a busy day. Met the Chief Minister for Delhi (a lady with a very unfortunate name) and her Health Chief, Angela taking great care to muscle up for publicity photos with them! We had a very pleasant breakfast on the Residency lawn and then took off on the tour de Delhi for the rest of the day, visiting Rotary projects.
I suppose you could say that we really saw what life was like for the 14 million people who live in the cities of Delhi and New Delhi (they’re right next to each other). First thing is the traffic. It takes you three times as long as you’d imagine it takes to get anywhere. The road system is good, but it’s completely snarled up, and it doesn’t help that they’re currently building huge sections of the Metro railway system just about everywhere. Oh, yes, and the cows wander about everywhere.
We rapidly learned to forget our western standards. The first place we visited was the Rotary Cancer Hospital: it looked old, clunky and, frankly, none too clean to us but they do an exceptional job. The land around the hospital was completely covered by relatives of the patients, literally camping out; they were there to support them, including cooking their meals on open fires.
Next port of call, after another short-distance but long-duration journey, was the Rotary Blood Bank. Fortunately they didn’t ask us for a deposit, and nobody needed to make a withdrawal. It’s a very impressive organisation, and up-to-date even by our standards. We met one of the founders; he’d served on various RI committees, and told us he’d been a Governor. We assumed that he meant a Rotary District Governor, but no, he meant a State Governor, (Nepal, actually) and was a genuine Your Excellency!
Our journey back to the hotel took us through the main commercial district at rush hour. Maybe you can imagine what it was like. They were selling just about everything you can think of. Really. We were able to get a really good look at the shops as we were doing about 2mph.
And the day still wasn’t over. We’d been invited to a social evening with one of the Delhi Clubs. All right, if you live in a country where tourists expect to pay £4 for a bottle of beer and £5 for a glass of wine, how might you get visiting Rotarians to make a big, big donation? That’s right, you feed them up, get them absolutely slaughtered then bring out the raffle tickets! And what a win-win situation! We could learn a lot about Rotary fellowship from the Indians.
Tomorrow, of course, is National Immunisation Day, so hopefully there won’t be too many sore heads. I can’t believe I’ve managed to type this and keep the lines straight.
I’ll try to post some pictures, but to be honest I’m having a bit of trouble working out how to do it nicely and neatly!
I suppose you could say that we really saw what life was like for the 14 million people who live in the cities of Delhi and New Delhi (they’re right next to each other). First thing is the traffic. It takes you three times as long as you’d imagine it takes to get anywhere. The road system is good, but it’s completely snarled up, and it doesn’t help that they’re currently building huge sections of the Metro railway system just about everywhere. Oh, yes, and the cows wander about everywhere.
We rapidly learned to forget our western standards. The first place we visited was the Rotary Cancer Hospital: it looked old, clunky and, frankly, none too clean to us but they do an exceptional job. The land around the hospital was completely covered by relatives of the patients, literally camping out; they were there to support them, including cooking their meals on open fires.
Next port of call, after another short-distance but long-duration journey, was the Rotary Blood Bank. Fortunately they didn’t ask us for a deposit, and nobody needed to make a withdrawal. It’s a very impressive organisation, and up-to-date even by our standards. We met one of the founders; he’d served on various RI committees, and told us he’d been a Governor. We assumed that he meant a Rotary District Governor, but no, he meant a State Governor, (Nepal, actually) and was a genuine Your Excellency!
Our journey back to the hotel took us through the main commercial district at rush hour. Maybe you can imagine what it was like. They were selling just about everything you can think of. Really. We were able to get a really good look at the shops as we were doing about 2mph.
And the day still wasn’t over. We’d been invited to a social evening with one of the Delhi Clubs. All right, if you live in a country where tourists expect to pay £4 for a bottle of beer and £5 for a glass of wine, how might you get visiting Rotarians to make a big, big donation? That’s right, you feed them up, get them absolutely slaughtered then bring out the raffle tickets! And what a win-win situation! We could learn a lot about Rotary fellowship from the Indians.
Tomorrow, of course, is National Immunisation Day, so hopefully there won’t be too many sore heads. I can’t believe I’ve managed to type this and keep the lines straight.
I’ll try to post some pictures, but to be honest I’m having a bit of trouble working out how to do it nicely and neatly!
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