Escape From Delhi

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After the epic failure of our first few hours in Delhi, the two of us spent most of the afternoon and evening holed up in our hotel room, watching Indian TV, playing cards, practicing our Hindi numbers, and trying to stay awake to overcome our jet lag.

We did make a brief foray out into the streets for lunch. Before we left our hotel room, we loaded up both our backpacks with everything we were afraid to part with if our hotel got broken into - most of our belongings. We got a recommendation of where to go from the front desk at the hotel. He even drew us a map.

We walked down the street and found it without too much trouble. It clearly catered to tourists, and was on the pricey side. But the food was good, the restaurant easy and comfortable, and only cost $7 (Rs400) for the two of us. Cheap compared to the US, but a bit expensive for India.

But we're willing to spend a bit more in the beginning while adjusting to traveling in a new place, making for an easier transition to traveling.

Come dinnertime, it was all we could do to keep our eyes open, and our appetites were minimal. We ate the leftovers from lunch, which we had packed in a tupperware we brought with us to the restaurant. We then passed out by 6 PM.

The next day, it was our mission to find a bus out of Delhi. We looked up the bus station on the map we'd gotten from the travel agency the previous day, and set out to walk there. We were a little more comfortable with leaving our belongings in our room, and only brought one backpack with only the more essential or expensive items. I prefer walking when I'm in a new place - I get exercise, which can be a challenge while traveling, get my bearings of a place, and have time to see the place as I walk along.

Walking in Delhi is tough.

There are rarely sidewalks, leaving you to walk in the street with other pedestrians, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, autorickshaws, carts drawn by a variety of animals, motorcycles, cars and trucks. Usually I'm able to stick to the side, leaving the faster traffic to pass on my right, but since all manners of traffic are continually cutting me off and parking in front of me, blocking part of the road, I have to walk around the vehicle into the middle of the street, always prompting a cacophony of horns. Sometimes the traffic would let up in one lane, but the cars and motorcycles in the other lane would always notice it, and drive in the opposite lane until the last possible second before being hit by oncoming traffic, then swerve into their lane, having moved up a few car spaces.

After an hour or two of walking, and some tricky navigation (street signs are scarce in Delhi, and the few that are hung are written in Sanskrit), we made it to the bus station. Before heading in, we grabbed lunch from a street cart. I'd been nervous about going to a street cart, not knowing what prices should be. I was worried that I'd be overcharged and not know whether bargaining would get me a fair deal or be insulting. It was simpler to stick to restaurants with fixed prices, even though they are significantly more expensive.

But I realized how silly that perspective is - even overcharged street food is way way cheaper than the tourist restaurants.

So I walked up to a food cart and asked how much? The owner replied Rs20 ($.35) for 3 pieces of roti, an Indian flatbread. I gave him the money and was served the roti on a metal plate, along with daal (lentil stew) and vegetables. Meg and I stood at the table, high above our shared plate, eating with our hands. When we ran out of daal, we even got a free refill. This type of dish is known as a thali, and when it comes to meals, is the best deal in India.

Meg was the only woman eating there among many men, and we wondered whether women eat out at food carts in Delhi. We still don't know whether they do, but we enjoyed our meal and eating outside tourist restaurants.

After lunch, we found the window for the bus that goes to cities in Punjab, home to the Sikh religion, a portion of the Pakistani border, and Tandoori chicken. We tried to buy a ticket to Amritsar. Unsuccessfully. The men behind the window did not speak much English, and seemed to tell us that there are no buses to Amritsar. They managed to communicate that we should go downstairs and buy the tickets there. So we walked down the stairs, to the bus boarding area, and tried to buy a ticket at the counters there, with a near identical exchange. It ended with - you guessed it - him telling us to go upstairs to the window that had told us to come there. At a loss, that's what we did. Like previously, the men at the window didn't help us out. (We later learned that you can only buy a ticket within an hour or so of the bus departure). But a man walking around told us he could take us to a private Volvo night bus, and asked us to follow him.

Now, it was our first couple days in India, and we were very nervous about scams and hoodwinks. I was wary of this man for several reasons. We were in the government bus station - bright and safe. I was afraid that we'd follow him into a dark alley, where'd we get jumped and robbed. Or that he would sell us a ticket that would turn out to be a fake. But after some deliberation, we decided to follow him.

Sure enough, he led us right down a dark staircase that went underground. Meg and I looked at each other, pausing before following him. Once we in the underground alley, he took us into a travel agency, where they gave us the hard sell.

"What's your name?" asked the travel agent. I stared blankly. "What's your name?" he asked again.

"How much is the ticket?" I asked politely.

The man who brought us there interrupted. "There are only 4 spots left on bus. You need to give us your name so we can make reservation." But I wasn't going to give in that easily. I persisted until I was given a price - Rs 900 ($15) per ticket. They did their best to get us to buy a ticket then and there, but we held strong enough to walk out of the office so we could discuss our options alone.

Sitting on the bottom of a concrete statue, watching Indians licking their McDonald's ice cream cones, Meg and I talked about what we wanted to do.

Did we have any other options?

We'd striked out at the government bus station. We'd also looked online, and found a cheaper ticket, and tried to purchase a ticket with the credit card, but we couldn't get the transaction to go through. We suspected we needed a phone number to complete the transaction, but we didn't yet have a phone. The travel agent at our hotel had also offered to book us a ticket, and we could pay him directly. That was attractive, because it was through our hotel, so we knew it was not a scam, and because it included a pickup right at our hotel, so it was mightily convenient. But it cost Rs1800 ($30), and was twice as expensive as the option in front of us, not to mention some of the even cheaper options online.

But we were afraid of being scammed. Something about the guy hanging about the government bus station and leading us to a travel agency in a random underground hallway made us question their legitimacy. We really didn't want to be hoodwinked - mostly because of the money we'd be out, but also for pride's sake. We reasoned that it had to be legitimate because they actually had an office and therefore accountability. If it was just a guy on the street, it would be easy for him to disappear. But there was an office that we could return to.

In the end, we decided to go for it. If it did turn out to be a scam, it would at least provide a learning opportunity. So we went back in and bought our tickets. The tickets themselves didn't give us much confidence - they were printed off an ancient printer on the desk, and while it had my name printed on it, it was just my first name and the "v" was not even capitalized. But we'd already bought the tickets, so we headed back to our hotel.

We weren't keen on repeating our walk, so we attempted the Delhi subway. Again, we had no idea what we were doing. We didn't even make it pass our first task: paying at the entrance to enter the subway. We waited in line first at a booth, but when we got to the front, the man at the counter told us that he only added money to passes, and to get a new pass or tokens, we had to go in the other line. We walked over to that other line - a much longer line. After 10 minutes, the line had not moved, only growing longer. There were 2 broken machines that were being ignored, and the line was at the only window open, the other half dozen or so windows remaining closed. After 20 minutes, the line still had not moved, and people were growing restless. After 30 minutes, the line imploded. All at once, everyone abandoned the line and rushed the open window, though I couldn't see anyone actually being helped. At this point, we opted for the walk home.

We know we could've gotten a taxi home pretty easily, but we wanted to avoid the hassle of negotiating with a driver. Now that we knew where we were going, the walk home went a little more quickly. For most of the walk, we were the only white people on the street, and we were mostly ignored by touts as we walked. But as we got to the Main Bazaar Road, the street our hotel was on, we began to see other foreign tourists, and people tried to sell us products and services - taxis, rickshaws, souvenirs, trinkets, even sleeping bags, which seemed rather random.

At our hotel, we packed up our stuff and checked out. It was dark by this point, and I was glad our hotel package had included late checkout until 6 PM. With our backpacks full, we walked down to the end of Main Bazaar Rd, and bargained for a taxi. We'd asked the hotel staff at checkout for a fair price to the bus station. He'd said Rs400 ($7) for a taxi, or Rs300 ($5) for a rickshaw, but he said it in such a way that I thoguth he was giving me a tourist price and I knew I could do better with a little bargaining. I'd been one of the go-to bargainers among my group of students while studying in Tanzania, and I was excited to get my bargain back on.

We started by asking a rickshaw driver for a price: he gave us Rs300 right off the bat, so I decided to aim for Rs200. A taxi driver offered us Rs300, but we told him we're looking for Rs200. He said that wasn't possible for a taxi, and pleaded with us to take his taxi for Rs300. We weren't expecting a cheaper taxi, and continued to look for a rickshaw. But the taxi driver kept pitching to us, and eventually we accepted the taxi for Rs250.

The driver was very personable with us on the drive through the hectic streets of Delhi traffic. He was very skilled, and knew a lot of shortcuts on our roundabout route to the station. When he dropped us off, I pulled out my money to pay for the fare. He told me he really needed the money and pleaded - no, begged - for a full Rs300. Although we'd agreed on Rs250, I felt bad because of the begging, and he'd driven us for 45 minutes through Delhi traffic for only about $4. I had mixed feelings about whether to give him extra - we'd agreed on an amount, and he was using begging as a technique to get a higher fare, but I felt that he did actually deserve more. I ended up giving him Rs270 - a little extra as a tip, but not everything he was asking for.

We'd been a bit worried about the underground passage at night, sketchy as it was even during the day. But it actually turned out to be very well lit and much busier at night, and felt very safe. We remained nervous about our tickets, and stayed on edge while waiting, making sure we got our bus ride. While waiting, we spoke to a very nice young woman who spoke excellent English, which she used to work a night shift for an American customer service outsourcing agency. She laughed when we told her we spent Rs900 each for a ticket to Amritsar - she'd bought hers for only Rs600. That actually made us feel a little better - we may have paid a high commission to the company, but that's a lot better than being outright scammed.

The next few hours turned out to be a crazy series of events to get onto our bus. Our transportation to the bus stop showed up late, of course. When it finally showed up and dropped us off, we waited in a large group on a random street corner, with a lot of other people waiting, and no sign of any buses. Eventually, one showed up, parking on the side of the street and disrupting traffic very well, but other people went on in front of us. Someone in street clothes, who didn't look at all official, checked our tickets and wrote something on it that was a mystery to us. We had no idea what was going on, but we were determined to get on our bus. After a couple hours on that corner, we joined a crowd, elbowing our way onto a bus. We had a dispute with 2 guys who were sitting in the seats assigned to us on our ticket, but they spoke little English and didn't move. We just sat in another pair of seats, hoping not to get kicked off. Someone did come around to check our tickets, but he didn't say anything about the seats, so we were in the clear. And finally, around midnight, our bus departed and we escaped the chaos of Delhi.

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