Delhi
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2007
1
3
16
Trip End
Jan 22, 2008
Delhi, Delhi, India,
India
Friday, November 16, 2007
I had been told by my good friend Chris, who has spent years in India that Delhi is a difficult place and that I shouldn't trust anybody. Thus when I first booked the flights and arranged to spend three days there, it was for the challenge rather than for sightseeing (I wasn't completely naïve about what to expect).
So there I was at Delhi airport with three things:
- no sleep
- no company
- no bloody idea what to do next
...and so I now know what the fox feels like when the horns sound and the dogs are released. I may as well have had my entire life savings in cash stapled to my trousers for all the excitement my appearance generated in the locals (at first I thought it was my natural charm and charisma but experience quickly suggested that this wasn't the case). The onslaught started with the pre-pay taxi booth and only ended some hours later.
There are two guys in the taxi, taking me to New Delhi station. One drives while the other tries to find all the ways they could extract money from me. For some reason I was feeling bold and against all advice about the scams decided to go with his suggestion to go to the tourist office instead of the station. The guy at the tourist office gave them the name of a hotel and put me back in the taxi and they took me to a hotel. The hotel didn't feel right. In fact the taxi didn't feel right and neither did the tourist office. Actually, nothing had felt right since the airport and I was really starting to understand what Chris had said.
So relying purely on instinct (by this time sleep deprivation has long since robbed me of rational reason) I paid the taxi fare, grabbed my bag and set off in a random direction.
The walk was hot and I saw a guy selling bottles of water for 12 rupees. I only had one 50 rupee note to hand and that was nearly torn through. He said he couldn't take it. When I said it was the only one I had, the price of the water increased to 20 rupees and the note suddenly became legal tender again!
Anybody with anything to sell approached me. I ignored all of them, feeling very rude in the process.
I didn't get much further on my walk. A combination of a six-foot-two frame trying to sleep on an economy long-haul flight, and two months of kit in my bag had contorted my back in ways that it frankly didn't care for. My saviour was Babu in his auto rickshaw, a motorised conveyance that looks like the offspring of an unholy union between a scooter and a gazebo. It appeared to weigh slightly less than my push-bike and is probably about as crashworthy.
He drove me to another 'tourist office'. It is likely that it was the same one as before and I may actually have been talking to the exact same guy I saw not thirty minutes previously. I really couldn't tell. But he had a hotel and Babu took me to it. This one seemed OK although even in my semi-conscious state I was aware that it was way overpriced. But I didn't care, I would have happily paid double.
And in a city where every vehicle's horn appears to be activated by the accelerator, the brake and the steering, the room was relatively quiet. What sealed it was a wood pigeon cooing on the windowsill, a sound I always associate with my childhood bedroom. And that's the one place in the world where I always sleep well.
Never have I enjoyed the sanctity of a bedroom more. Door bolted, light off, air con on and I can relax.
Time to sleep...
* obviously the word 'some' here implies at I have at least three or four readers. Don't let me down here folks.
