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Published: April 5th 2008
I'm here and everything they say about India is true. It is a complete assault on all of your senses - and it's somehow wonderful and horrible all at the same time. But to begin at the start....
Arrival in India was a baptism of fire for me. My flight from Sydney was delayed by 5 hours which meant that I would miss my flight from Mumbai to Delhi that evening. In Australia that seemed like no problem - Qantas called and advised that they had changed my reservation to the following morning and arranged for accomodation in Mumbai.
But my quiet confidence through the flight had not accounted for India's unique manners, bureaucracy and love affair with the form.
First I had to learn that Indians do not like to say "no" - it took me a while to realise that "yes, please have a seat, we will be with you in 5 minutes" really meant "we don't have authorisation to give you a hotel room but we don't want to upset you so we will park you in a corner and forget about you".
Then, when I finally persuaded the powers that be that I did deserve a hotel room, I had to learn that you can't do anything in this country without filling out several forms in triplicate. Arriving at the hotel at midnight local time (5:30am our time) it took me 45 minutes to check in.
Then when I arrived back at the airport 5 hours later I was advised that my reservation had been cancelled and now I would need to buy another ticket. And the really sad thing is that at this stage I still didn't truly realise how frustrating this country can be.
FINALLY I made it to Delhi and had a very happy reunion with Jolanda. We met 13 years ago climbing Kilimanjaro. We have kept in touch - but hadn't seen each other in all that time. But it turns out that she is one of those people where 13 years doesn't matter all that much. We seem to have picked up much where we left off.
Now...about Delhi. It is a truly appauling place. The pollution is almost unbearable. The noise is maddening. The roads seem to operate with no rules. There are cows and mangy (no doubt rabid) dogs everywhere. EVERYONE wants to sell you something and no one accepts "piss off" for an answer.
And worst of all you can't trust anyone or anything in Delhi - everything turns out to be a scam. On my first day in Delhi we ran head on into one of the more prevalent scams in the city....the tourist office. We went to the train station to purchase tickets for our next few trips. We were looking for the office that sold tickets and when we asked directions we were taken to a "railway official" with all kinds of fancy looking ID etc. He showed us that the tickets to Jaiselmer were sold out on his computer and advised that what we needed to do is go to the tourist bureau as they have an allocation of tickets for foreign travellers. He then (very kindly) helped us to get a rickshaw to take us to the tourist bureau, where we were met by another very official looking man. In the end we were saved by greed and technology. First our official man was not happy just to sell us train tickets at over 3 times the real price as we later found out - he also wanted to sell us accomodation. He became so pushy about this that we started to get suspicious. Then his computer system took forever and he was unable to produce the train tickets. Finally we said we would go for a coffee while we waited for the tickets - and then made a run for it. We returned to the train station, found the ticket office and had our tickets in 5 minutes at a fraction of the price. Feeling very foolish we returned to our hotel.
In all I was in Delhi for two days and was very glad to see the back of it when we boarded the 19 hour overnight train to Jaiselmer. When I awoke the next morning I felt a very long way from the congestion of Delhi as I watched the desert and the small desert villages fly past.
I will leave that for the next chapter. Sorry there are no pictures - I will need to download some onto a CD in order to be able to upload them here. I can't believe I've been away less than a week - it feels like a lifetime!
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Theresa May
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Hello from the spoiled Canadians
Nowhere to go but up...I hope! Can't wait to see the photos. I like your updates for the weekend...much more likely to read them. Perhaps you need to find the right translation for "piss off" in order to get the correct reaction!