The Spa at the top of the world

Christelle and I were looking into spas in case we wanted to celebrate my birthday that way :) so we went to the Galaxy Tower in Gurgaon just to see it. It has a rooftop garden area that you walk thru to get to the spa, and the views of Gurgaon are pretty good. They have a rooftop pool too, and we did get a "menu" and then we immediately knew we weren't coming HERE anytime soon! whew! So we took some photos, and looked around and left. One thing about India, even when the prices are way out of our league, just because we are foreign, they always assume we COULD afford it, so nobody turns up their nose at you when you go into the Mercedes dealership at the mall, or check out a really pricey spa!

And here is the other thing about India - you stand in a crazy expensive place and look out over a crazy poor place. This group of tent houses is at the foot of the Tower, hidden behind a tall fence. My guess is that the people living here are working on this construction project. That is often how it works - they set up temporary housing on the site, and the whole family works. I have much more to say about this with other photos of construction.



It is so hard to reconcile the extremes here - so much money in the hands of a few, and such extreme poverty in the lives of so many. On the one hand, we ate in a hotel here (with the Helac accountant) and I saw an Indian woman so clearly filthy rich she could have bought and sold us with what she had in her purse! On the other hand, everywhere you look people live under a tarp tent with no floor, cook over a fire, and carry their water in a bucket. It is hard to wrap your head around it.