***It looks like Internet connections are too weak here to upload multimedia, so I've switched tracks to writing posts and will upload images, sound and video when I return.***
I arrived at Delhi International late on Thursday after a 14 hour flight. The crowds, filth and hustlers were immediately in my face. The semblance of order at the prepaid taxi stands inside the terminal quickly broke down in the taxi pool. The miasma of Indians, beaten autos, honking horns in a cloudy dust-bowl bore no process. Disingenuous louts ran up to offer help, then insist my ticket was to their cab, as I struggled to find the real operator no. 1878 for the 10km ride to the domestic terminal to check on schedules and pricing for the first stops on my tour, holy cities of Varanasi and Kujaraho.
To be frank, an ungodly majority of the Indians I met in the first 4 days in-country, and all that approached me has tried to swindle me, but this first ride to the domestic terminal was certainly the worst. The cabbie insisted the terminal was closed, contrary to advice received by an official moments before, and tried to take me to his "friend's hotel" in the city. I insisted the airport first, and when he dropped me of at the rear entrance, where all the satellite offices were indeed closed, I was in a jamb, considering an all-nighter in cafe next to the road. All this just for schedules and fares. Fortunately, somebody tried to sell me a trip to the other side of the terminal "1km" away. What airport is 1km large? I asked around and found my way through the cargo loading area, a creepy and pitch black no-mans land.
The real terminal was open for business, and the prices on the major airlines Jet and Kingfisher, the in-country Indian prices, were pretty hefty -- $155 to Hyderabad, $170 to Kujaraho, and similar US level rates. The alternatives were to fly the newly launched low-cost providers like Spice Jet and Deccan, but at wacky middle of the night times... I priced out my trip and it was not pretty. I had to cut Kujaraho and its exotic carvings and take the overnight express from New Delhi Train Station to Varanasi and the crematory Ganges river.
I hopped a cab with instructions to a strip of hotels by the station, but confusion set in when the driver misunderstood (intentionally?) and took me onto the highway exit for Karol Bagh. Wait, a thought triggered in my head, something ain't right -- sure enough, the guidebook calls this place out in a bold warning letter box. "No, no, no, no, no," I shouted at this guy, wishing I had some way to coerce his cooperation. "New Delhi Train Station!" But anyway he stopped in front of a dingy bombed out hotel under a raised concrete highway. I was ready to kill. We puttered on his diesel-guzzler and passed a military officer with a low slung automatic rifle. The sight gave me mixed feelings of relief and alarm. I checked the litany of Delhi warnings again. True to form, the cabbie stopped in front of the fake ticket booking office opposite the station and jumped out of his steel cage, exclaiming "here! here!" --- just as the Rough Guide had warned. I threw a 500 Rupee mark (at about $10 -- way, way too much) in his face and ran across the street without waiting for change.
The New Delhi Train Station at 2AM is not a place for living beings, let alone foreigners with passports and hundreds in US currency strapped around their neck. I made my way through a dusty graveyard of sleeping auto-rickshaws, roaming mangy dogs and huddled masses -- literally street-level heaps of wrinkled and hairy flesh huddled in swaths of mud-stained robes, wading up to the station entrance where long, wild-haired children played with trash fires in the gutter and concrete slabs poised, crumbling on bent up iron rods. There was moonlight, but dust so impenetrable it bestowed an glowing halo on these decrepit forms as bizarre illuminated arcade games hovered like spirits, simple bright-rite designs, a green-blue wheel, an orange swastika, collapsing into each other in hypnotic rhythm.
This is the least inviting place on earth, I think, turning back to see a child on my trail. "Hotel, sir? Which country?" I decide to ignore him and take out my guidebook to locate the nearby hotels. I walk out the parking lot, the cabbie is gone, and above the fake ticket office is an imposing buildup I did not see before. It's a towering ramshackle of concrete and advertising, protruding into the dusty night like an Acropolis of death. "Hotel sir?" The boy has been following me, he points at the Acropolis. I decide for myself I don't like Delhi.
The entrance to the hotel district of Paranjbenj is adorned with a mangle of low hanging electric wires protruding under dust stalactites like a post-nuclear cytoplasm. The hotels are shuttered and heavy florescent lights quickly dissipate into the street shadows. The boy is at my side now, tugging my arm and pointing into my guidebook. "Very expensive," he points to the shuttered dumps and tries to hand me a hotel card. I hear a mechanical jangling behind us and a rickshaw with a rider, a blond-haired, white tourist (American? European?) ensconced in the chassis. They whisk past, his souvenir shirt, with Hindu eyeball and stylized script, staring back at me...
I keep checking the guidebook until I find the Sheldon - "sparkling new and somewhat incongruous hotel," the guidebook says. Luckily, I wake up the attendant.
