First Impressions

Our first night in India... wow, I am in a kind of awed shock right now. It is absolutely not what I expected at all, and yet everything that I expected, if that makes any sense.

We landed in New Delhi at around 10:30 pm. There were a lot of happy people on the plane, let me tell you! After 16 hours of sitting in a chair, you start to hate having knees! We deboarded the plane, and walked down a long corridor. To the left were windows looking outside, but we couldn't see much. Even though there were street lamps, their light had trouble passing through the smog that covers the city. We made it to a large room, with four or five long lines going toward the front. Customs. Being our first time through, I was a little nervous that we would have some trouble here, but after a 15 minute wait, the customs officer took less than a minute to have me through the line, with barely a word. After Jeremy finished, we walked into a larger room, where luggage was being loaded onto a conveyor belt much like the way we do it in America, except that the doors through which the luggage rotated were essentially holes to the outside. There were 2 deisel forklifts and 3 men loading the luggage onto the conveyor. Every once in a while the wind would catch the forklift's exhaust just right and blow a big black cloud into the airport. So maybe its not really like the way we do it in America...

After collecting our luggage, we proceeded to exchange our American money for Indian rupees, and head out to what I would call the foyer. You enter the foyer by walking up a nine foot wide ramp, with metal bars running along the sides for people to lean on while waiting for their arrivals. These bars ran the length of the ramp, probably 30 feet, and they were covered with people and signs, written in both Hindi and English. Of course, none for us on either side, so we walked beyond the ramp. And that's when we got our first incessant merchant, trying to sell us a cab ride. It doesn't matter what you tell them, they just ask again. I think it took about 20 Nos and 3 times walking away to finally get him off our backs, that is as long as we didn't walk past him again.

Jeremy made a call to the man arranging our pickup, and found out that he was waiting for us outside. We made an exit, and found a man waiting for us with a sign that said 'Jeremy Corson and Dale Quimby' in big letters. He said hello, and asked us to follow him. While we waited for a car to pick us up, Jeremy and I stood there, getting our first look at the roads of Delhi. Everywhere you looked at the road, there were cars, bikes, and people. Yes people, in the middle of the road. Everyone seemed to gun it, and then slow down quickly if something or someone gets in the way.

So when our ride arrived, we stowed our bags in the trunk and hopped in. The driver dove right into the road, and very quickly weaved in and out of the traffic. Keep in mind that the road systems in India are left-sided, as well. We stayed in the far right lane, which I''m guessing is the fast lane. There was also a LOT of honking! Everytime we approached a car in the other lane from behind... HONK! Everytime there was a car in front of us slowing us down... HONK! Just because it seems like the thing to do... HONK!!!

I have to say, I was a little nervous... it looked like everytime we made a quick move that someone was going to hit us. And not really having a full understanding of the horn's role in Indian driving, all the horns going off really scared the crap out of me! Imagine a 3 lane highway with horns ablaze and 6 physical lanes of traffic, and motorbikes mixed in too! Then you'll start getting an understanding of driving in India!

After a roughly 20 minute drive, we made it to the Kerala House. We walked in, and were asked to sit down. After some discussion, we were given a key and shown to our room. In the room at this time was the man who picked us up, the man showing us to our room, Jeremy, and I. All four of us stood around for quite some time, no one really sure what was expected of the other. It seemed also that the two men with us did not speak much of eachother's language. One spoke Hindi, the other spoke Marallaram (S. India). This made it very difficult, but eventually we all muttered our way through it and the two men left.

Jeremy and I discussed our surprises and then went to bed, exhausted!