Delhi day one

I made it to Delhi.  I’m tempted to say by the skin of my teeth, but the journey in wasn’t that bad – really.  The flights were very smooth (the Russian airliner Aeroflot was bulky, boxy and communist-looking), and the Delhi airport easy to navigate at 5 in the morning.  I felt vaguely sick for most of the air trip, though that passed.  Delhi is humid, about 65 during the day and in the mid 40s at night.  Driving in to town (again at about 5 or 6 in the morning), was a bit busy, but not bad, and the main streets were open and clear.  We stopped near the area I was headed for and popped into the tourism office as the driver wasn’t sure where the place was / I didn’t have the number handy.  I found the number, he called, and I spoke with someone who said they no longer have room tonight, a group is overstaying.  I am suspicious of this – it sounds like a very common scam whereby the driver gets you into a place where they get commission.  We wait for about 15 minutes for the tourism officer to come – he also calls, I hear the same thing and wonder if indeed the place is booked out (I will email them when the internet comes back on).  He suggests multiple times that I fly on to another city as Delhi is full of Indians for the Independence holiday (Jan 26) and that everything will be full / more expensive.  Again suspicious, I tell him I need to sleep and, looking the part, he finds me a new spot (Hotel Ivory) at roughly the same cost as the other (900 rupees / 20 dollars).  The taxi guy brings me and I crash there (after insisting on 900 rather than the asked 1000 – it is 2 dollars but I argue anyway for some reason and he relents).  It is 8 in the morning and I had been traveling for about 18 hours. 

My first impressions of the city were not as striking as I expected – it is certainly busy, and cars and rickshaws and peds share the road, and the traffic moves on the left (British style), but it was not hard to walk or feel safe in the taxi.  I have yet to try to find a place from another, and I expect that would be difficult, but ubiquitous rickshaws can get me out of a pinch for about 2 dollars, so I’m not too nervous. 

The city is not as dirty as Cairo, though the people I’ve dealt with have kept my guard up (as expected in the city).  When I first say down in my room with its oversized bed and no soap or toilet paper, I wanted to go home.  I still feel the pangs of ‘what the hell am I doing,’ and thinking about how much easier it is to shop at the Seward Coop and how much quieter the river walks are.  I thought hard about how difficult my initial decent into India would be, and how I would need to suspend judgment for at least a few days, if not weeks, and still I struggled to keep my composure. 

It takes a lot of effort to travel!  I was spoiled by Turkey and Sweden, but I do have Egypt and Morocco under my belt which helps tremendously.  It is also helpful to think about how much of my stress comes from a physical discomfort – it is humid, or showering in cold water, or having a crampy belly, or a headache, motion sickness, and that pervasive confusion of not knowing a place.  It has also been familiarly lonely – where I am staying is not a backpacker place, and even walking around the market searching for a power adaptor (with a hotel guide) I saw only two other white folks among thousands of Indians – both middle aged men.  But physical discomfort and loneliness both pave the way to something, and neither are so bad when I stop and think about it.  And while the internet is spotty (off all afternoon today), I do have my computer to write on and ‘Arrested Development’ and Neko Case to keep me company.  I figure I have been sad and lonely and sick enough times to know that ‘this too shall pass’ and to ride it out without too much bitching. 

My plan now is to make my gd plan – everyone asks what I going to see and I have no answers yet.  Like packing, I have a number of places laid out in little piles.  I need to figure out where these things are in relation to each other, travel time and so on, and I should be ready to go in a day or two.  The travel guy said I could hire a car and driver for sight-seeing in Delhi tomorrow for about 600-700 rupees (15USD) and I’m thinking about that.  I think I’ll stay one more night in Delhi and head out for wherever the following morning. 

I did snap a few photos through my haze this morning and this afternoon, which I will post here.  The scale and impression of the place cannot be captured here, but maybe you can imagine – it is constant horn honking, people to where I wonder where they all sleep at night, and smells typical of the streets of a busy sub-tropical megalopolis (food, animals, urine, body odor, exhaust etc).  I hope to have more interesting photos up soon.  Thanks for reading!  

Snowplow in Moscow!

Gandhi airport - shining clean

Delhi street with my 'guide' in the front