New in New Delhi
We grab SIMs for $10 cash each, decide not to change currency (probably not smart)... Where we get into trouble is the ground transportation. Immediately after leaving the airport, a dude attaches himself to us and demands to know where we're going, wants to offer us a cheaper fare. He quotes absurdly cheap fares for the city center (ok, ~75 rupees / USD, so ~13 USD / 1000 rupees, he quotes 200, our fare to a closer address ends up costing about 2000). He follows us for like 10 minutes! But confident in modern rideshare, we eventually find our way to the Uber/"Ola" rideshare station. Easy! But no Uber will match with us. So we get ahold of Ayush on my international data plan and eventually, after much trying of weird things while hiding from mosquitoes under the airport fans, he manages to order us a ride. (He has to bribe the guy with an extra $400 to get him to accept...)
The ride from the airport to Faridabad (a city? a suburb of Delhi?), where Ayush's family lives is an incredible, eye-opening experience reminiscent of when I stepped out of my $10 hotel room in Shanghai for the first time almost 6 years ago. Colorful trucks, mopeds, and cars aggressively navigate the streets, making frequent use of their horns. Several times we approach a vehicle going the wrong way in our lane. It's night, so it's not that well lit, but there are lots of brightly colored signs everywhere. Foggy, alternatively nasty and sweet smelling air pours in through the window. Lining the street is a chaos of human activity. Pretty close to the airport, there are shanty-towns. Glancing down one alleyway into one of these, I got a brief look at what looked like a big group of kids dancing and goofing around. Like in China, there are piles of construction materials everywhere, and folks making themselves at home among them. Sloan sees a few cows, although I miss these. Our driver knows how to get ahead; he honks and scoots into tight gaps. (All the taxis look dinged up around the sides...) The only people who beat us are a couple of dudes on a moped who hold the horn down the whole time as they speed by. One of the rare times we're stopped, a malnourished looking kid we passed on the road walks up alongside and raps on Sloan's window. Finally we pull into Ayush's neighborhood. The taxi man gets on the horn with Ayush to figure out how to get in and to get credentials to get past the neighborhood gate and security guard.
Ayush greets us at the gate of his house, pays the taxi fare in cash. He laughs at us goofballs for not bringing cash. What if we had needed to pay the driver for tolls along the way?! Also apparently cash is essential in India and many places don't take card. We chat for a little bit, trying not to wake up Ayush's dad (although he wakes up anyway). They have a cook who makes us fresh bread (roti) directly over a big gas burner and heats up some incredible vegetable soup (mulligatawny?) and some potatoes/peas dish. Chatting with Ayush, we find out there are about 300 guests coming to the wedding, many of them not family, but we are the only Americans (!) the only other Westerners are the bride Divya's roommates from Cornell (a couple I guess?) are actually from Germany and Argentina respectively. Sloan and I had been thinking of taking a trip to Agra (where the Taj Mahal is) tomorrow, but we're a bit tired, low on resources like liquid cash, sunscreen, cell data (SIMs activate at 3pm tomorrow...) and the trains are mostly booked. We try to book trains to Agra for Friday instead, but Sloan's password manager is acting up and the train website freezes him out. Meanwhile, I struggle for a while trying to set up a Github Pages blog, realize this is totally silly, and set up this log instead.
This is Awesome!!!
ReplyDelete