I don’t know what I was expecting when I arrived at the new Delhi airport. Years of online videos of the chaos of Indian cities had clearly taken root in my brain. I expected to hear hundreds of people talking, street vendors selling food from push carts, cars honking incessantly, and cows meandering wherever they pleased. And yes, part of me thought I’d see all of that inside the airport.
But the airport that I walked into was no third world mess with dirt everywhere and signs of neglect. The New Delhi airport was clean and shiny, looking fairly new even though I knew it wasn’t. There were no big crowds; in fact it was empty enough that I checked my phone to see if we had landed at a low-traffic hour. No, it was 2:30p, and the airport was fairly empty. No pedestrian traffic jams, no hustle, and no bustle. Just easy jostle-free walking from the jetway all the way to immigration.
The folks at the immigration counter were unfortunately what you would expect from stereotypical government employees (no offense intended to government employees in my reading audience; I know you guys are the ones who actually do work). While immigration in the EU takes less than a minute per person, the Indian officials were taking their time, spending up to 10 and sometimes 15 minutes on each traveler. As I inched closer to the front of my line and started to feel optimistic about getting out of the airport at some point today, the agent decided it was time for his lunch break. At 3:15p. So my line had to merge with another. Fortunately the other line was surprisingly accommodating and it was eventually my turn. It was during my interaction with the immigration officer than I first ran into something that would become a recurring theme during my visit: as a brown man visiting New Delhi, the official assumed that I spoke Hindi. I apologized, said that I only spoke English (I didn’t think that offering to interact in Spanish would help much) and he switched languages with good grace. A few questions later, I had my stamp and I was on my way.
Baggage claim was equally clear, clean, and manageable, and I was starting to think that my ideas of what to expect in India had been overly tainted by internet videos. Even after clearing customs and getting to the arrivals hall, it felt no different than landing at Dulles. My driver met me and led me outside, with the usual “how was your flight” type questions. It turned out that my driver wasn’t the driver; he called the actual driver who brought the car around. My guy climbed into the shotgun seat, I was in the back, and we were off. And that’s when I started to see the real India.
Indian traffic laws make sense. Painted lines delineate lanes, cars are equipped with turn signals, traffic lights are mounted at intersections, all the usual things that you would expect. But people follow those laws about as closely as they obey “Do not insert Q-Tip into ear canal.” Lane lines serve no value other than to indicate how many vehicles the government thinks should drive abreast. Drivers see that as a low score that they should try to beat. I only saw my driver use his turn signal once; he signaled a left turn then served right to go around a car that was in the way. At another point, a rickshaw was stopped in the left lane (no shoulder), blocking traffic, while the driver got out to answer a call of nature on a tree. Traffic on some of the highways and larger roads seemed reasonable, but once you got to the smaller surface roads, that’s where Mad Max started to feel like a documentary.
Eventually, I made it to the hotel. As the driver pulled into the lot, we were stopped by a guard in front of a gate who looked under the front of the car with a mirror before stepping aside, moving the gate, and letting us enter. If he was checking for bombs, he missed a whole lot of the car. I would be more inclined to believe that he was looking for an oil leak. As I entered the lobby, I was asked to put my bags on a conveyor belt to go through a security scan and I was directed through the adjacent metal detector. It of course beeped because I still had my phone and wallet in my pocket. The guard ran a metal detector wand over my pockets, heard them both beep, said thank you, gave me a short bow, and waved me forward. I’m not sure what it was that he’s checking for, but I’m pretty sure he missed it.
I completed the check-in and dropped my bags off in the room. According to Google Maps, the “Jaypee Siddharth 5 Star Hotel And Spa” is a four-star hotel. I guess they are piggybacking off the naming conventions of dingy strip mall Chinese restaurants. You know the ones I’m talking about: “Super Happy #1 Golden Family Best Buffet”. But as far as four-star hotels go, this place is pretty solid.
My first course of action was to get some cash. I looked on my phone for the nearest bank and found that it was just two blocks away. I memorized the route (leave the hotel parking lot, cross the street, turn right, go 2 blocks and the State Bank of India is on the left), and set out. I got step one done with no trouble: I was out of the parking lot. Step two, crossing the street, was my first challenge. Driving an Indian traffic looks to be part skill, part talent, part luck, and a whole lot of guts. I kept looking for a break in traffic and couldn’t find one. After a few minutes of waiting and several false starts, an older gentleman walked up and was going to cross near where I was. I am familiar enough with Asian culture to know that Indians tend to respect their elders. Running over an old guy would be bad karma, so I figured I would cross the street with him and use him as a human shield. He found whatever break it was that he was looking for and started walking. I was hot on his heels, close enough that I could have picked his pocket if I’d wanted. We made it across the street intact, and he turned left. I, unfortunately, had to turn right. On to my next challenge.
There was no sidewalk here. Well, there was, but cars were parked on it. So I had to walk on the other side of the cars which meant I was walking next to the traffic. The problem is that when cars are parked on the side of the road, traffic that’s trying to get by may need to cross the center line to get around. That means that I had to watch out for traffic not only coming from in front of me but also from behind me. (I would later learn that I also needed to watch for traffic coming from the sides, because mopeds might be on the sidewalk and decide that they would rather be on the road, but that’s part of a different story). I continued walking with my body as close to the parked cars as I could get. I got to the bank that was marked by a blue awning on the first floor of a dilapidated building. The door to the bank was closed with a metal gate. Either they were out to lunch or the bank was closed for the day. Not a good sign. I walked around the side to see if there was another entrance and found nothing. As I started back towards the hotel, I saw a man walking away from the bank entrance. I took a closer look and saw a small dirty glass door to the side of the main entrance with ATMs visible. I pushed the door open gently, because there was a security guard seated in a chair behind it. As I looked at him, I realized his chin was on his chest his eyes were closed and he was fast asleep. The door shut with a thud and he didn’t flinch. I went to the ATM and withdrew my money with no trouble. As I left, I realized that the only thing he was guarding was the chair. Nobody was going to steal that chair while he was asleep in it. The ATMs, however, were fair game.
I managed to get back to the hotel without getting hit by cars, although I did get honked at a few times, and not in a fun sexual harassment kind of way. Now it was time for me to figure out where to go for dinner. With a major case of jet lag, I wanted to eat soon, shower, and go to bed early. But finding a restaurant that would be safe to eat at that was also open at 5:00 p.m. was a challenge that will require a story all its own.
