Day 1: India arrival (19-20 December 2007)

I arrived in Delhi international airport late last night and found one welcome and one unwelcome thing. Welcome: the driver holding my name placard was waiting for me in the reception line. I had read and heard that the Delhi airport-to-city trip can be hazardous (read: taxi drivers trying to scam you in switching to/staying at overpriced and shoddy hotels) and I had booked a room and a ride late the night of my departure. Well done, Skype! The ride cost me Rs550 - more than a regular taxi, but worth it for the peace of mind (and cheaper than the Rs900 ride some other upscale hotels were offering). Unwelcome: fog/smog/haze. Walking out of the airport doors I found myself ensconced in an eerie haze, much like what greeted me when I last arrived at the Beijing airport. It added to the exoticism a bit, but I feel like exoticism will be no short supply on this trip. And I've had my share of pollution for a lifetime after just two weeks in Beijing. I've heard the fog is just a December-January nighttime thing. I hope so.

I didn't sleep so well, from a combination of jet lag (I can't not sleep on planes!), the cold in the room (I should have packed some long-johns for nighttime), and the occasional noise (ditto for earplugs). I spent most of the morning running errands: Connaught Place, the concentric-circles roundabout at the heart of New Delhi, was eerily quiet at 8am and didn't pick up until after 10am. Nothing like China, where folks are up and at 'em early, or like Vietnam, where they're up earlier still. I ate my first motherland meal - a delicious, flaky onion dosa. (It's southern Indian food, I admit, but one of the glories of national capitals is how well they do the regional fare from all over the country. Beijing is a perfect example. But not DC.) I found a decrepit Internet cafe running Windows 98 and an outdated version of Internet Explorer that couldn't properly read Gmail or my Stanford webmail. I purchased a SIM card for my phone. (I decided two or three trips ago that I'm going cell-enabled from here on out.) I took a nap. I had lunch (butter chicken curry at what appears to be an old Delhi stalwart, Kwality. I'm a little bummed that traveling alone means I can't order obscene amounts of food to share with others.)

The afternoon was for sightseeing - I decided to take it easy and save the crush of Old Delhi until later. I found a autorickshaw driver (actually, I intended for it just to be a one-way trip but he persuaded/cajoled me into hiring him for the afternoon) and went first to Ghandi Smitri, the site where Ghandi lived the final months of his life and where he was assassinated in January 1948. It was a simple place, and the most moving part of it were the concrete footsteps that showed Ghandi's last steps as he walked to his evening prayers. Watch the film "Ghandi" before going, if possible - the scene played over in my head, and according to all the descriptions at the site, the movie's portrayal was painstakingly authentic. After that was Humayun's tomb, a sprawling complex with well-tended gardens and a large mausoleum housing the remains of a 16th century Mughal emperor. I must say that while I am glad that these emperors thought so highly of themselves to have such architectural wonders erected in their memory (Timurlane's Guri Emir mausoleum in Samarkand being a prime example fresh in my mind), I am pleased that such displays are no longer the norm. Better to have vast halls of justice, government, books, art than tributes to one person.

Both Ghandi Smitri and Humayan's tomb were quite peaceful, wholly different from the everyday Delhi that was waiting outside. I plunged back into it at the New Delhi train station, which was as thundering and crowded a train station as I had ever seen. People were pouring out from everywhere, and the were quite an eclectic group. Even the train station in Urumqi, in China's Xinjiang province, with its rag-tag mix of Uighurs, Han Chinese, and other Central Asians was calm by comparison. My big challenge was finding the International Tourist Bureau at the station - it's the only place that non-Indians/non-residents can book their tickets, where apparently are on some sort of tourist quota. Once I got to the Tourist Bureau the ticket buying process went quite smoothly: the process is a bit arcane (one has to fill out a detailed form with the train number and date, after which they issue the ticket) but the information desk was quite helpful. The trick was finding the Tourist Bureau in the first place, which took me no less than one hour. Here I'm going to have to blame the common language that separate the Indians (and Brits) from us Americans: the signs and guidebook insisted the office was on the *first floor,* and to go nowhere else. Well, I should have remembered that for some first floor doesn't mean ground floor but first floor up the stairwell. That would have saved some time and aggravation.

The train station is right next door to the bustling Paharganj district, which offered little let down from the train station. One the one-line bazaar street I stopped first for two full-size cars headed in opposite directions down this impossibly narrow lane, and after that for an elephant - yes an elephant- walking down the street. I had been told to expect the unexpected, and had done so to date: crowds, dirt, loudness, hassles, touts I was well ready for. But an elephant walking down a narrow market? In the nation's capital.

Whew, that was a long first post. Let's see if I can keep it up.