Leapfrog

My journey to Delhi was kind of smooth, but there were a few complications. My plane from Istanbul to Almaty (Kazakhstan) was over an hour late and my connecting time in Almaty was just over an hour so I was really worried that I was going to miss that flight. The aggressive old Kazakh ladies with full sets of gold teeth didn’t make my experience any better. When I arrived in the Almaty airport there was a small beautiful Kazakh lady saying “Delhi! Delhi?” and I ran up to her, followed her wildly motioned instructions and was driven out to the plane. I was the last person on it and I watched the beautiful Kazakh mountains as we flew away.

The rest of the trip was fairly smooth, exploding pens from the air pressure aside, and the passport control in Delhi was very smooth. We landed, I got through passport control, took out money, met the representative from my program, and we were on the road 45 minutes later. And I was in Delhi.

Dheeraj drove me straight to my accommodation, which is basic, but comes with two guardians who make the four of us breakfast and dinner. It is very luxurious for something that is not at all luxurious.

That evening we were taken by auto rickshaw to Dilli Haat, a famous market where you pay an entry fee and then wander around in incense-perfumed air making fun of the “REAL PEARLS” signs with your new friend. The other girls in the program did some shopping, but I held off and just got some dinner.  This was my first real experience of India heat, and I knew pretty immediately that the temperature was going to be one of life-centers for the next three weeks.

Sleep came easily that first night. The heat sucks the energy right out of you, and the AC in our room comes on at 9:00- once the air cools down the beds look very appealing.

Day 1:

My first full day in Delhi started with a delicious homemade breakfast. Afterwards we were driven from our little apartment to the office space where we were given our first half-day orientation. The coordinator is a very kind man who is shrunken in the way older people often are, and he proceeded to give us a safety good humored safety talk as well as talking about the history of some of the most famous Delhi monuments. The room had a fan, a detail that I now notice with 100% laser-beam focus. Driving around is my favorite part of being in Delhi so far, watching the roads feels like a very honest way to experience daily life here.

I spent the afternoon just napping and catching up with my emails, which isn’t very exciting, but helped me feel a bit more grounded and needed to happen. I woke up to a freshly cooked dinner and headed to bed soon after.

I did have a bit of a freak out that evening, but that was more due to the fact that I was reading upsetting news stories than the fact that I was in India. I managed to get ahold of my Dad and he calmed me down. Thankies Papa!

Day 2:

I was expecting to launch straight into my Hindi lessons and cultural orientation but Day 2 turned out to be a sight-seeing day. We were driven by air-conditioned car to the India gate, The Lakshmi Narayan Temple, and Akshardham Temple, the largest Hindu temple in the world. These temples were beautiful, but as they are in use, no pictures inside are allowed. Dheeraj, who picked both of us up from the airport, guided us through all of these places, telling us the stories of the Gods, and giving us a sense of Hinduism.

Interestingly, we were the only western tourists at these sights, almost every other visitor was Indian, presumably spending their summer vacations in Delhi.

Akshardham temple was overwhelming in its scale and its attention to detail- every inch of that building is covered in hand-carved Gods, elephants, peacocks, and other traditional designs, but I actually preferred the Lakshmi Narayan temple, where people came not to look and to gawk, but to pray.

We spent that evening at the mall, which felt about as dishonest as it sounds. We had asked to go to an inside market and this is where Shankar, one of the guys who looks after us, had recommended. The AC was definitely a blessing and I was able to get peanut butter, so overall it was a successful mission.

India so far:

This is the place that truly feels the most different- which it is, but I feel far away in a way I hadn’t before and I feel unsure in a way I hadn’t before, which is good, I think, because that’s what I was going for. It’s not the food, the dress, the language, or even the insane that driving (though those things help) that really makes it feel like you’re in a totally different place, it’s the underlying feeling that there is something deep and important that you don’t understand, that you could never understand. It doesn’t help that everywhere else I’ve traveled so far I could conceivably be from that place, I may have stood out as a tourist, but it wasn’t inconceivable that I was a local. Here there is no chance of that, but I’m an outsider in a much more meaningful way than simply what I look like.