A First Timer’s Visit to India

Indira Ghandi airport in New Delhi is a busy place even at two o’clock in the morning. Lama Tenzin and his sister were waiting for me at the baggage carousel to help me with my luggage, a huge 60-pound duffel bag with all the gear for a month-long trek in the Himalayas. This was quite some years ago, but I understand that India has managed to get even hotter since.

It was hot inside the terminal and I wondered why there was no air conditioning, and the carpeting was faded and worn as well. It wasn’t until we stepped outside into the blast furnace heat of the New Delhi night that I realized the air conditioning inside was operating on full.

May is the hottest month of the year in New Delhi. Daytime temperatures regularly exceed 40 °C (104 °F) and often peak around 39 °C to 45 °C (102 °F to 113 °F) or even higher. I made a guess my night of arrival was even hotter. May is characterized by very low humidity but scorching hot dry winds known locally as Loo, with a consensus among travelers and residents that the heat during late May is the most intense and punishing of the entire year. The challenge for citizens and trevellers is mainly to make it through the day alive without going mad. If you did survive the heat of the day, then there were still the blazing nights to consider.

Press enter or click to view image in full size

Lama Tenzin had sent me explicit instructions on how to book a registered cab, what to pay so as to arrive with wallet intact at the Tibetan Refugee Colony on the north side of New Delhi, and where to find the registered cab at the airport. I already knew from reading about India, regarding negotiations between buyers and sellers, that the naive foreigner would get skinned alive arriving at a fair price for anything and everything, especially booking a cab at the airport, all the while desperate to get to a hotel room with five-star air conditioning. But before arriving at any hotel the visitor must somehow negotiate the Delhi highway system and what passes for traffic in a city of 23 million long since gone into a frenzy from the scorching heat.

Before exiting the airport, we were forced to step over poor people sleeping in the hallways by the doors and attempting to cool off for a few minutes before security arrived and drove them off. Stepping outside to find the cab, we were struck a mighty scorch by the blowtorch that is the New Delhi air in May. In the immense parking lot, armies of people were sleeping on the ground, in-between the cars, and along the road to the highway. Given the number of pot holes, it was difficult to ascertain if we were actually driving over people or just pot holes. The air smelled like an open-air latrine with a side hint of old cadaver and an odour of ancient excrement.

The taxi was an old Hindustan Ambassador, historically part of the iconic black-and-yellow taxi fleet long in operation in New Delhi, a design based on the equally ancient British Morris Oxford. Before driving off the lot, the driver explained the rules in a thick accent that sounded like his tongue had been chopped to pieces by a hacksaw.

“Do not touch the windows or the curtain covering the windows. Do not attempt to open the windows or to look outside, especially when someone outside is pounding on the window. Under no circumstances open the door or try to adjust the temperature of the air conditioning, no matter how hot it seems. Do not take any photographs. Otherwise, enjoy the ride. It is not that far but it may take quite some time.”

Although it was the middle of the night, the highway was bumper to bumper with freight trucks chugging along at about two miles per hour. Apparently, most freight is delivered at night in Delhi because in the day time the traffic is even worse. As with everywhere else in India, every driver found an excuse to honk the horn every few seconds. “You are going too slow! Get out of my way! I want to change lanes! You are following too close!” Given that there were thousands of trucks, all honking all the time, the mind shattering cacophony was worse than the godawful heat. It was like a rock concert without any music. You could hear the blast for miles. If the temperature wasn’t hot enough to make you snap and want to attack your own friends or family, the endless honking picked up the slack.

We weren’t five minutes into the cavalcade when we stopped. There were people walking all over the highway, standing by the side of the road, and lying down on the side of the road. There was a concrete divider in the middle of the highway, with a ledge about a foot wide, and there were even people sleeping on that. There were many groups of people simply standing and talking. As soon as we stopped, one woman from one of the groups came running over, holding a baby high in the air. She started pounding on the window next to me. Despite the rules, I swept the curtain aside to have a better look. The instant I did so, she started rubbing the baby’s face, and especially the baby’s nose, all over the window leaving swathes of mucus and pus. The driver started yelling. I swept the curtain back but at least I didn’t take a photo. I was pretty sure the entire setup was a scam, that the babies were rented out by the hour, and somewhere its real mother was asleep in bed (a condition to which I myself aspired). I wished we were already at the Tibetan Refugee Colony; or, at the least, that we didn’t have homeless women rubbing baby snot all over the windows in order to extort small change.

It was a long and painful ride and when we finally arrived at the Refugee Colony I was done like dinner, cooked, hardly able to stand. I had left my energy on the plane somewhere over Cambodia and could only dream of a soft bed. Lama Tenzin hauled my big duffel bag out of the trunk of the car and put it carefully on the ground, avoiding the river of piss that was floating down the middle of the rough dirty alley in which we had parked. He told me not to move, which I considered a good idea, and went to look for accommodations. The stench was profound, a draft of urine counter-balanced by the whiff of the large turds floating down the middle of the street, everything drifting down the river of piss.

The cacophony continued, a blare of truck horns surrounded by the supporting chorus of endless shouting. A man carrying a boom box blasting Indian pop music took a liking to me (i.e. the Pee and Poop Sentry), sat down on a fence next to me, and proceeded to sing and stare at me like I was a space alien just dropped in from the third dimension. My guess is that the Colony did not witness a great many tall white sweaty western tourists with duffel bags looking like they had just been dragged behind a bus, and wondered why I was standing in a pool of piss like the village idiot waiting for transcendence. I had no idea what to do if for some reason Lama Tenzin got lost and didn’t come back.

There was only one street light in the alley and faces came out of the gloom like ghosts. There were battalions of faces, swarms of them, like rats in human form, and then rats of the real kind as well, all darting back and forth in the dark next to me. I kept one eye on my duffel bag and one eye on the street. Who could believe that there would be so many people wandering around at 4 o’clock in the morning? Finally, Lama Tenzin returned from his perambulations, ready to lead us to the luxurious accommodations he had personally examined and approved, the kind of dwelling a famous western writer like me deserved after a grueling flight half way around the world.

The entire street was full of buildings teetering on the edge of collapse, badly built decades ago and little in the way of maintenance ever since. One looked as horrible as the next. Finally, we veered to the right into a courtyard and through a door and down a narrow dark hallway with many doors on both sides, one of which Lama opened with a key and indicated I should enter. I did so, and he left, cutting short any discussion on my behalf of the room’s suitability. The room was about 10 feet square, with a well-worn wooden floor and no window, No, it did indeed possess a window or had possessed a window in the distant past, into which management had inserted a large baffle containing a grate and large fan within the grate, in the pretense of providing a cooling device like an air conditioner. This particular device blew hard like the winds of hell, drawing in the hot air from outside, scouring the room with heat and dirt like a car exhaust badly in need of tuning. There was no way to turn the damned thing off.

The only furniture in the room was a large ugly futon draped on the floor, a tattered smelly blanket falling apart at the seams. I lay down on this disgrace for a bed and wrapped myself in it, because, despite the heat, I was shivering from the hurricane it produced. I soon discovered that the futon had devolved into a series of large hard balls batched together, so that lying on it produced multiple layers of pain points in my ribs and back.

I endured about a half hour of pretending that I could sleep on it, then picked it up and threw the thing into a corner as far as possible from the hurricane, crawled back and held it over me as a cover from the wind, and went to sleep on the floor, finally snuffing out like a candle. In the morning I inquired and found the cost of the room was $1.00 USD, an obvious ripoff at any price, and made a mental note to discuss with Lama Tenzin our future sleeping accommodations for camping in the Himalayas between if indeed we survived the Tibetan Refugee Colony to live another day.

Waking at noon and meeting Lama Tenzin’s sister for lunch, she asked me if I needed any Indian money. If so, we would need to go to a bank. No, you don’t make an appointment, you just use the ATM. There was a bicycle rickshaw driver standing outside and we negotiated his fee. Lama Tenzin’s sister was almost as big as me, but fares were negotiated by distance, not weight. The argument went back and forth for some time. To expedite affairs, I offered to pay, dependent on my getting Indian rupees out of the bank. My offer was refused. An agreement agreeable to both parties was necessary. Face must be saved. Finally, an amount was finalized and we climbed into his rickshaw. I inquired as to the fee later and discovered the fare was about 15 cents Canadian.

Between the two of us passengers, I estimated we weighed about 350 pounds. It was also about 350 degrees in the noon sun. We pulled off slowly, the hamstrings on our driver’s legs bursting at the seams. I wondered and worried if he was going to die from a heart attack during the journey. He looked like he was 80 years old, but age can be deceiving. He may even have been younger than me. He puffed and wheezed mightily, hitting a top speed of perhaps two miles per hour.

If the commute between the airport and the Tibetan Refugee Colony was loud, the cacophony on this street would have to be experienced to be believed. It was impossible to hold a conversation. Labourers smashed metal. Bricks were pounded. Engines roared. People yelled, sirens were sounded. Police blew their whistles. I witnessed a constable whack a man with his night stick. Car and truck horns bellowed. Overall, the volume was louder than a jet taking off, and it was just an ordinary day on an ordinary day, although I admit it was somewhat warm.

Finally, we pulled up in front of the bank. For some reason, the building looked like it had been bombed. Perhaps, at a previous time, it had been. There was rubble all over the front steps. But, of course, many Indian streets looked like they have been bombed. There was an alley just to the right; a guard at the front of the bank pointed to it. I hesitated. The alley was dark and I was planning to withdraw a substantial amount of money. I tiptoed along carefully, peering over my shoulder to see if anyone was following. I came to a turn and veered left. I could see a sign indicating an ATM.

I turned the corner and came face to face with three tall men with beards toting submachine guns. They had helmets and uniforms so I took them to be police, security guards or soldiers. In short, they were the good guys, guarding the ATM and not planning to remove the bills from me as I exited. Nonetheless, my heart started pounding. I am not comfortable with men I don’t know toting guns, especially in dark alleys in foreign countries. I entered the ATM booth carefully, once again looking over my shoulder. The guns were pointed at the sky and not at me. Pulling out my bank card, I put it in the slot, choosing to withdraw the maximum, in this case $200 Canadian.

Press enter or click to view image in full size

One by one, out emerged the bills, 20 of them, all coloured white with a slight pink tinge, the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi on the front along with the Reserve Bank of India seal, not to forget the Ashoka Pillar emblem and the RBI Governor’s signature. There was a small problem. Each bill was in the amount of 1,000 rupees, which is much the same as trying to have a $1,000 Canadian bill (if there is such a thing) accepted in Canada. In other words, it never happened.

I carried them around India and Nepal for a month and not a single establishment would accept a bill of that magnitude. In the long run that proved useful, because when I was captured by Maoist guerillas at 18,000 feet crossing the Kang La Pass in Upper Dolpo in northwest Nepal I used the bills to buy my freedom. What else was I going to do with them? You don’t need air conditioning at 18,000 feet.