Delhi
and the edited text of a hasty e-mail to dad i sent the day after leaving delhi:
delhi airport was chaos - it's probably the largest airport in the world so poorly organized. i came out of customs (a guy just took a slip i wrote - no interrogation - and that was the sum of india trying to protect its borders from charlatans). and when i came out of customs, the taxi terminal was complete chaos - the police department pre-pays taxis to certain destinations. however everyone is trying to cheat you - people actually come around trying to sell fake slips - taxi drivers try to drag you to their commissioned hotels, try to act like they can tax extra for more luggage, more than one passenger etc. fortunately this swiss fellow roland and i determined we were both going to paharanj (a district in delhi) and he had a better idea of how to handle things - with the possible exception of the alarming driving of the taxi driver, which led us into no less than 12 separate fender benders. on the way i promptly learned that roland too was actually on the way to dharamsala for the dalai lama's teachings and waiting a couple days in delhi for his wife, so we rented rooms in the same hotel and i tagged along with him through delhi and met some ridiculously interesting and genuine people, including an old german man who was referred to for the whole chai session simply as "the old man". actually we ran into another friend of his, svend, right on the streets of paharanj entirely by random - and five of us eventually rented a van and driver to take us north to dharamsala. i must speak though about paharanj - it's an enormously complex and miserable place. when i saw the map in the guidebook with a street called "main bazaar" I imagined a street with sidewalks etc but pedestrians, rickshaws, taxis.. they all share the same pavement in a noisy mass of horns blaring. it was seeping out with garbage and sewage and had nothing in common with streets back home.
so we rented a van to dharamsala - five of us ultimately - and now i'm finally finding some time to blog this (i had forgotten my blog password, actually, this switchover to google threw me for a loop) and i have plenty to say about dharamsala, since i've been here since the first of march, but that'll have to wait until tommorow. plenty of reflection too - alot of ideas are taking root in my head.
delhi airport was chaos - it's probably the largest airport in the world so poorly organized. i came out of customs (a guy just took a slip i wrote - no interrogation - and that was the sum of india trying to protect its borders from charlatans). and when i came out of customs, the taxi terminal was complete chaos - the police department pre-pays taxis to certain destinations. however everyone is trying to cheat you - people actually come around trying to sell fake slips - taxi drivers try to drag you to their commissioned hotels, try to act like they can tax extra for more luggage, more than one passenger etc. fortunately this swiss fellow roland and i determined we were both going to paharanj (a district in delhi) and he had a better idea of how to handle things - with the possible exception of the alarming driving of the taxi driver, which led us into no less than 12 separate fender benders. on the way i promptly learned that roland too was actually on the way to dharamsala for the dalai lama's teachings and waiting a couple days in delhi for his wife, so we rented rooms in the same hotel and i tagged along with him through delhi and met some ridiculously interesting and genuine people, including an old german man who was referred to for the whole chai session simply as "the old man". actually we ran into another friend of his, svend, right on the streets of paharanj entirely by random - and five of us eventually rented a van and driver to take us north to dharamsala. i must speak though about paharanj - it's an enormously complex and miserable place. when i saw the map in the guidebook with a street called "main bazaar" I imagined a street with sidewalks etc but pedestrians, rickshaws, taxis.. they all share the same pavement in a noisy mass of horns blaring. it was seeping out with garbage and sewage and had nothing in common with streets back home.
so we rented a van to dharamsala - five of us ultimately - and now i'm finally finding some time to blog this (i had forgotten my blog password, actually, this switchover to google threw me for a loop) and i have plenty to say about dharamsala, since i've been here since the first of march, but that'll have to wait until tommorow. plenty of reflection too - alot of ideas are taking root in my head.
posted by Steve C at 6:51 AM
1 Comments:
Oh man, it's good to hear you are doing well. It sounds like Delhi is similar to Bangkok, just a big cluster fuck.
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