Holidays 1979

This trip started badly. From Milan I took the plane that was supposed to take me to Rome to meet up with the group; it left late and arrived an hour after the scheduled time, my luggage was handed to me only an hour after my arrival, I dash from the national airport to the international one, and when I got there the travel agency "Il Ventaglio" representative was leaving, the others had already boarded. With his help I did the boarding documents and checked in my luggage, dashed to the gate to get on the plane; at customs they warn me that my passport expired in a few days and I would have had problems on the way back — my fault for not checking, we will see later......

Last surprise: the plane had already pulled away from the terminal, a quick phone call from an official stopped everything, a police car took me to the rear staircase opened for me; finally on board I felt everyone's eyes fixed on me, as if 007 had arrived. On arrival in New Delhi, with our tour leader I went to the Italian consulate to renew my passport; unfortunately the consul was ill and bedridden, a clerk made me the necessary documents and then, in his company, we went to the consul's room, who received me kindly; I stayed with him quite a while, chatting and telling my adventures. Before returning to the hotel we stopped at the airport to collect my luggage, which had arrived with the following flight. All's well that ends well. On this trip I visited some beautiful places and others that were very ugly because of the misery I encountered and saw.

Unfortunately I did not keep a diary as on later trips and so I do not remember the names of the places I visited. In a city, whose name I do not remember, the hotel itself provided us with plastic bags to use as boots because we would need them on small streets where sewage discharge was everywhere and you walked in s.... At one point I had to step over a person wrapped in rags lying on the pavement; he did not move, perhaps he was dead and no one paid attention; after me another local person took him by the feet and leaned him against the wall and, without saying anything, walked away. I saw quite a few of these scenes: cows lying in the middle of the road and cars driving around them, dead animals floating in the rivers, people bathing in putrid, foul-smelling water. By contrast, we tourists were guests in grand hotels with exaggerated luxury.

From 1979 to today, certainly many things will have changed, but this trip saddened me, seeing how millions of people live in these conditions of absolute poverty and others in sumptuous palaces with guards and servants. The photos were taken with film cameras, the same ones were then damaged by customs equipment and finally scanned, so they are certainly not of good quality, but they still describe what I saw. Among the many trips, although glad I made it, it certainly will not be one I would want to do again.