Well, for me, this was far too long ago - and I need to go back soon - but I thought I'd share my recollections of my arrival on Indian soil. This is in honour of my good friend Libby who begins her own Indian adventure today in Delhi...
27 October 1999
My first step out of Bombay Airport found mayhem, even at 2am. The baggage carousel had been a final air-lock against the mad world of India outside: I could sense the heat and the chaos beyond, so I took my time retrieving my luggage, partly dying to find out what lay ahead, partly dreading it.
Immediately through customs all hell broke loose. It was the middle of the night, but people were everywhere: shouting, gesticulating, pleading. Somehow I managed to get a pre-paid taxi organised, and was surprisingly impressed how this system worked until, a couple of miles into the journey, my driver pulled over into a petrol station and asked me to pay for his fuel! My refusal cooled our friendship somewhat, and the final few kilometres into town were spent in an uncomfortable silence as the warm night air blasted through the open windows. My jaw began to drop as I gradually became aware of the after-dark world of the city pavement dwellers: at first the occasional wrapped lump by the side of the road (is it a corpse, I wondered?), soon becoming a dense population of street-sleepers huddled up against the night.
The Lawrence Hotel, a small and cheap one-star selected from Lonely Planet's tome to India, wasn’t immediately known to my driver, although he at least got me to the right area of town. The neighbourhood was eerily pitch-black with groups of shady-looking locals on every corner, and there was very little to distinguish one building from another. In the end, I located the gloomy open stairwell of the Lawrence Hotel, and hauled my heavy backpack (replete with a gap year’s supply of luggage) to the second floor, neither sensing nor daring to hope for any signs of life.
Unbelievably, the 'concierge' was present, albeit in the form of a grubby youth sleeping across the reception doorway. Even more unbelievably, he had, scrunched up into a tiny ball in his hand, a tatty scrap of paper with my name on it. He hauled himself to his feet, showed me along a short corridor into my room, turned on the light and left me to it. The four walls and ceiling reflected pure white back at me: there was absolutely nothing there, except a hospital-style bed-frame and mattress, circled from above by a rather murderous looking fan. “Welcome to India”, I mouthed quietly to myself. My adventure had begun.
My first step out of Bombay Airport found mayhem, even at 2am. The baggage carousel had been a final air-lock against the mad world of India outside: I could sense the heat and the chaos beyond, so I took my time retrieving my luggage, partly dying to find out what lay ahead, partly dreading it.
Immediately through customs all hell broke loose. It was the middle of the night, but people were everywhere: shouting, gesticulating, pleading. Somehow I managed to get a pre-paid taxi organised, and was surprisingly impressed how this system worked until, a couple of miles into the journey, my driver pulled over into a petrol station and asked me to pay for his fuel! My refusal cooled our friendship somewhat, and the final few kilometres into town were spent in an uncomfortable silence as the warm night air blasted through the open windows. My jaw began to drop as I gradually became aware of the after-dark world of the city pavement dwellers: at first the occasional wrapped lump by the side of the road (is it a corpse, I wondered?), soon becoming a dense population of street-sleepers huddled up against the night.
The Lawrence Hotel, a small and cheap one-star selected from Lonely Planet's tome to India, wasn’t immediately known to my driver, although he at least got me to the right area of town. The neighbourhood was eerily pitch-black with groups of shady-looking locals on every corner, and there was very little to distinguish one building from another. In the end, I located the gloomy open stairwell of the Lawrence Hotel, and hauled my heavy backpack (replete with a gap year’s supply of luggage) to the second floor, neither sensing nor daring to hope for any signs of life.
Unbelievably, the 'concierge' was present, albeit in the form of a grubby youth sleeping across the reception doorway. Even more unbelievably, he had, scrunched up into a tiny ball in his hand, a tatty scrap of paper with my name on it. He hauled himself to his feet, showed me along a short corridor into my room, turned on the light and left me to it. The four walls and ceiling reflected pure white back at me: there was absolutely nothing there, except a hospital-style bed-frame and mattress, circled from above by a rather murderous looking fan. “Welcome to India”, I mouthed quietly to myself. My adventure had begun.
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