Arriving in India

The tale I have to tell began more than two days ago. It is neither particularly happy nor particularly sad. It is filled with the exhaustion of international travel and sensationalized by what still feel like near death experiences. What I am also about to share with you might be offensive, not because I intend to be offensive, but because I am exhausted, my feet have swollen into their own baby elephants, and I today I have had the grand total of an onion naan (a large kin to the pita, served like a buttery quesadilla with sweet red onion), a banana, and three sections of a tangerine. [Note: I started this last night, but finished it this morning. Can you tell how far I got the last night?]

International Travel

I like to travel, but as my backside broadens I am less enamored of air travel. The flight from Chicago wasn't bad. Boeing 777s are far and away my choice of jet liner. However, my seat kept wanting to slide forward, which meant that I often felt like I was going to slide onto the floor. If you add that onto a relatively sleepless night, you can understand why all I wanted to do in Heathrow was sleep.

But sleep was highly elusive! First, there was the security checkpoint. When flying from Chicago to London, my toothpaste posed no threat to airline security. Magically, when I landed my toothpaste became liquid C4. Of course, the people who love these rules are the shops, because people will throw away a perfectly good tube of toothpaste and they are encouraged to buy a new tube of their favorite brand at the shop in the terminal. I, on the other hand, am unwilling to throw away a completely full tube of toothpaste just because somebody decided that my toothpaste was a potential bomb threat. So I asked if I could check the bag and keep the toothpaste. The lady escorted me to the baggage check, I deposited my bag, and she even let me reenter through the first class security checkpoint, which meant that I didn't have to wait in line, which had gotten quite long for all the “other class” passengers.

Once I got to terminal 4, I got some lunch at a pub. The Bombardier was warm and tasty, although less tasty with a chicken caesar salad. It's not that the salad was bad. In fact, it was really quite tasty for a salad (especially one served in a bar), but it was not intended to be mixed with beer. I had hoped to get shepherd's pie with peas and chips, but I had failed to note that this was only on the children's menu. In my haste, I ordered the salad. If I had paid attention to the menu, I would have had meself a nice piece o' steak and mushroom pie. Oh well.

Then I sought out my gate, which was conveniently posted nowhere, not even on my boarding pass. I made the proper inquiries and went to that gate. I found a place to briefly lie down, but was soon awoken by the fire alarm. It went off for about twenty minutes. An hour later, it went off again, by which time I had a splitting headache. I found some Icy Lemon Fanta, which is second to Bitter Lemon in my pantheon of sodas, took two Advil, and decided that I would build one of the webpages that I needed to construct before Tuesday.

Once I finally boarded, all seemed well in hand. I found my mark right away, as he was sitting next to me. Before this story takes on a spy novel quality, I should say that my mark is Sebastian B�ttrich, a friend of Sascha, my boss. Somehow, and it really is a bit of a mystery as to how, Sascha found out that Sebastian was sitting in seat 32C, so I snagged the seat next to him on the plane. Because Sascha had discovered this without his knowledge, you can imagine the surprise on Sebastian's face when I walked down the aisle and said, “You must be Sebastian.” Good times.

The flight was uneventful. I took sleeping pills, I had the vegetarian meal, I went to sleep. I did manage to watch The Devil Wears Prada, which wasn't great but Meryl Streep was in fine form. Mostly, I slept, and it's a good thing I did, because the international travel was nothing compared to the domestic travel.

My First Impressions of India

I am completely unprepared for India. Nothing, and I honestly mean nothing, has prepared me for the 10 hours I spent in a taxi whose driver seemed to have strong suicidal tendencies. I had expected the driving in Delhi to be chaotic. I should say that by chaotic I meant chaotic like Rome or Paris is chaotic. Lots of little cars darting everywhere in a nice, orderly rhythm. (I'm sure that some people might differ with this description, but it never really bothered me, even when I was the one behind the wheel.) Driving in India is not chaos. It is a state better described as total anarchy, when all order is subverted by the impulses of the various actors. There are three demarcated lanes of traffic with six vehicles across these lanes at any given point. The patrons of the roadway include (but are by no means limited to) bicycles, scooters, motorcycles (often with the entire family on the motorcycle), animal-drawn carts (cow, donkey, mule, horse, take your pick), cars, trucks, and cows. Just because there is a barricade dividing the traffic into two clear directions, don't think that there aren't cars going in both directions on one side of the barricade. Some are going the opposite direction head-on, others are just backing up. And don't forget that people are darting across the roadway at any given moment.

If the visual spectacle puts you off, imagine the audio track. Each truck has the following printed on it's tailgate: “Blow horn.” As much as I might want to poke fun at this, it is a highly useful mechanism for letting someone know that they are about to run you off the road or letting that same someone know that you would like to pass, or for signaling drivers coming around a mountain curve that you are coming around that same curve. Add into that the normal noises from such a mix of transportation devices and you have a fairly good idea of the soundtrack to this ten-hour trek.

Cows. Somehow I was unprepared for number of free-roaming cows. Somewhere in my mind I knew that cows roamed freely here, but that image had not moved past the trite pastoral imaginings based on my own experience with cattle. If you missed it, there were cows mixed into the traffic. Most often they were toward the outside of the road, but this was often not the case. In a completely insensitive moment, I found myself wondering if a global economy can actually work in a place where cows are a roadway hazard. The answer is clearly yes, because even in the remote location of Dharamsala, there is Mountain Dew. But it raises another question: if a cow wandered onto the runway as a plane was taking off, what would happen?

I suddenly realize that I need to provide more detail about the arrival. Fred Pook, one of the organizers of the Air Jaldi Conference, arranged for a group of us to be picked up by taxi drivers from the airport. There were to be seven of us, which required two vehicles. Joy was already at the airport, Sebastian and I arrived at 06:15. David and Shannon had arrived the night before and were camped out at one hotel, while Kloschi (whose actual name I still don't know), was camped out at another hotel.

Of course, neither driver knew anything about where the others were or where anything was in Delhi. I thought I remembered where Dave and Shannon were staying, so I searched my email to find a number and called them. They thought that they were going to be picked up at the hotel. We attempted that, but it was hopeless. No one seemed to know where the hotel was, and the driver had no idea where he was going. We were, at various moments, going head-first and backwards down the road the wrong-way. We did manage to pick up Kloschi, who called while we were stopped with no idea of where we were going. He ended up being very near the airport, down a side street off of another side street that we happened across because the driver saw the sign in his rear view mirror as we were driving backwards down a one-lane alley.

At this point, we were quite clear that six passengers were simply not going to fit in the one car. I telephoned Dave and Shannon and told them to take a taxi to the airport where they could meet up with the other driver, who was waiting for Lars, who was supposed to arrive at 07:20. The other driver was supposed to wait around because there could be other passengers who were stranded. Did I mention that neither of the drivers spoke English? As it turned out, the other driver left immediately when Lars arrived. I still haven't heard from Dave. I am relying on his ability to handle himself, because there is literally nothing that I can do for him, other than notifying Fred of the situation, which I have done.

We drove a little ways outside Delhi and the driver asked us if we wanted to stop for some breakfast. This seemed like a good idea. It was here that I had the onion naan. Yummy. The others got either fried cheese or fried vegetables. I was much happier with the naan. I also ordered a rotti, which would have been really tasty, but they never delivered that. Oh well. Back in the car.

The Journey

I can't even begin to describe in full what I have seen. I didn't take pictures. Partially because that destroys my ability to actually take in what I am seeing. Partially it is because I wouldn't know what to take pictures of, and I really hate it when people take random photographs that lack personal context. I think those types of photographs do the worst violence to their subjects and they also make for really boring slide shows. Here's some snippets.

I don't know what kind of agriculture I'm seeing. It's everywhere along the roadside. I recognize some rice fields. I recognize a potato digger. There is a bunch of stuff for which I don't have any frame of reference.

We hit a dog. We had moved from the large multi-lane highway to a country road. The dog came off of a field and started to run along with us. He was right in front of me, and then I saw him dart in front of the car. I heard the bump, and then the yelp. It was a sickening feeling. I don't think I've ever hit a dog before.

The clothing on the roadway was intensely colored, especially the women. The men were mostly in drab clothing, although some wore bright blue or pink shirts, and some of the headwear, I'm not sure it is called, was bright pink and green. The women wore colors of every possible hue: stunning blues and greens, shocking pinks, vivid yellow.

Diwali. The Indian New Year, as it was described to me. A festival of lights. Firecrackers everywhere. Amazing. Way better than New Year's Eve in the Netherlands or Germany.

Dry river beds. I'm not sure why, but so many of the river beds we crossed were dry. I suppose this might be the result of the season. Fall is setting in, and after a long, hot summer the rivers are dormant, waiting for the delivery of run-off from the Himalayas. There was strong river that was not dry. It's water was crystal clear. I wonder about it's origin, given the emptiness of the other river beds.

Arrival

When we arrived in the Mcloed Ganj area of Dharamsala, which is where most people seem to be staying, our driver informed us that he couldn't go any farther. He was partially correct, as the streets were very narrow and full of people. He was also lying, because he knew that he could have gone farther but didn't want to. We unloaded our things and trekked up the street in the cool night air. I mean up, because Dharamsala is in the foothills of the Himalayas, as you can see from the picture taken from the window of my room [soon to be added]. Everyone else was staying at the Green Hotel, which we were able to find rather easily.

At the Green Hotel I learned that my hotel was actually 4 kilometers away, in a little village called Naddi. I walked back down the road to a place that seemed like it was full of taxis just half an hour earlier. Taxis were now sparse. I asked one driver, who refused to take me. I asked another, who said no as well. Finally, I found someone who was willing take me. It cost 120RP, which is just about $3. Best investment ever! The people at the Shikhar Hotel are very nice. I had a lovely dinner of curried mixed vegetables and allo gobhi, a curried potato dish, with chapati, (a close relative of the tortilla) and sweet tea. I was also given water, which I decided to drink. I have been constantly advised to not drink the water unless it was from a bottle, and I held to that until we arrived in Dharamsala. But this area seems so fresh and clean that I have decided to partake in the water, at least until I can find some bottled water this afternoon. This great meal cost about $3.

I struggled to make it to dinner without falling asleep, so when I returned to my room, I crawled into bed (it was about 21:00) and fell asleep. I woke up this morning at about 05:30. The light was just starting to creep across the mountains. I'm getting rather hungry, so I'll wrap this up. It is about 8:30 at the moment and I'm pleased at the thought of taking a shower. I'll turn on the boiler, crawl under the warm blanket, and wait until the shower is ready.