**pic added 5/11, post complete**
I waited around until I saw some people start congregating near the counter, so I went up. They are looking for a man who speaks English, is what I gather. I’m standing maybe 6 inches from the window and a man literally squeezes in front of me and handles a transaction. I’m realizing how forward you need to be in India. Western politeness doesn’t really work here. I move my arms a bit wider and prevent anyone from getting that opportunity again. I wait about another 15 minutes, and apparently the man I’m looking for has arrived. I later see him also working security, and later again somewhere else. The airport is small, but not that small. Maybe he is important.
I ask for a flight to Delhi, and he asks me if I intend to go today. I’m thinking, no, maybe in a week or two, I just like to come out to the airport and handle it in person. Yes, today. Please. God. Today. The pressure to get out of Varanasi is looming heavy now, and it doesn’t recede until the wheels come up as we leave the runway.
The man says it will cost the equivalent of about $80 which I pay, and he gets my passport info, etc. He gives me a printout of my ticket and says to go through what amounts to the initial security point. (There is a guy with what looks to be some kind of machine gun inside a sandbag box outside). There are probably two hundred people outside this security check point. And people are not going in. I step outside my normal way of operation and push my way through to the front. I push old people and young people out of the way. I push luggage out of the way. I just basically push my way to the front. I now know what relative morality is. This would be basically unthinkable for me in the States, and here it is what I am doing, because it seems necessary.
I get to the front. Hand the guard my passport and ticket printout page, and he looks at it. Waits a few minutes for maybe some divine inspiration, and then lets me through.
Into the airport and it’s air-conditioned, and I mean air-conditioned by Western standards. I am grateful. I pass another security checkpoint, which is basically empty, and the guard lets me pass after seeing the passport and ticket paper again. Up to the checked luggage booth. I stand in line there and then they tell me I have to go through another security checkpoint behind me which I’ve already passed as it was unmanned and no one else was stopping either.
Back to the X-Ray and there materialize about a hundred people with 4 times as much luggage as is necessary. Which I really don’t understand because the ticket man told me it was something like 4 dollars per kilogram over on weight. All these people will have to pay extra (even carry-ons, he said were weighed), unless it’s an Indian/foreigner thing here too (many places charge one price for Indians and another often up to 25 times more for a foreigner… I imagine there would be some discrimination lawsuits if that went down in America).
The X-Ray machine is broken, or more specifically the belt system is broken, and the guy doing the bag inspection is either extremely particular or it’s his first day. I think it’s the former. The belt goes backwards three bags, and then forward three bags, backward three bags and forward 4 bags, at about an 1/8 of a mph for a net gain of one spot. The people are all trying to get their stuff on there, and I pull my Indian boldness out again and push my way up gradually over about 10 minutes.
My bag finally goes through and they want me to unpack it. Which is a real hassle, but I know they just want to be safe. I open it up and they go through some things, and then I pack it back up again and put it gets a flat strap mechanically cinched down and welded around it. You know the kind of strap I’m talking about. We usually see them around copier paper boxes or something equivalently heavy. I suppose they do this so you can’t add something to the bag after it gets checked.
I go up to the baggage counter, and somehow I am underweight, and they don’t check the weight of the carry-on. They take my paper ticket and give me an actual boarding pass, and I move to the next security check point where there’s a separate line for “Ladies” and “Gents.” I wait in line with a maybe 40 people, get up to the front, and pull out the laptop and they give me a token for it with a number on it. I now to go a different area, where you walk through a metal detector, and then get a pretty thorough wanding. I wait my turn there again, and it says to put anything in your pockets into a dish, but there are no dishes. I ask the man, and he points me back to the first place as I have a phone. So, back to square 1, except I don’t have to wait in the first line again.
I give the curt young lady (most of the younger ladies seem to have a bit of a chip on the shoulder), and get another token for the phone. Back into the second line and wait again. Through the metal detector again, which says safe for pregnant ladies :). The guy wands me and tells me to drink the water I’m carrying. I do, then I spit it out like it’s poison or maybe gasoline or something. No, I’m just kidding. I don’t want to be shot. I drink my water like the nice man tells me and then it’s over to exchange my tokens for my phone and laptop. I am literally holding out my tokens for several minutes, while the clerks are ignoring me, talking to themselves and other people. I step forward almost onto the counter. Still nothing, but they are looking at me. After almost 5 minutes, a man takes the tokens and then instead of putting the laptop and phone bins in front of me where there’s adequate room, he puts them down at the far end of the counter. I retrieve them, and now I’m past security.
There’s a couple of food booths here, one sells Snickers and Pringles and veg hotdogs, which I should put a picture of here. I eat more than I’ve eaten in a while, because I’m not sure when I’m eating again, and my stomach will tolerate a bit more food because the ambient temperature is below the spontaneous combustion threshold.
I ask a man who looks official which gate and try to show him my boarding pass, but he says something agitated to the gist of, “Let me get this plane out of here, then yours will board.” I look for a boarding display for what gate to go to in lieu of the man’s help, and I finally find a computer monitor about 22” inches on the wall that has the information. It shows my flight and it says “Security” next to it and has no gate number.
I hear an overhead announcement, something about Mumbai and boarding. Well, that’s not me, because I’m going to Delhi. About 35 minutes after my boarding pass says the plane starts boarding, I look up at the monitor and it shows an Air India flight as boarding (I’m on SpiceJet not Air India). Despite the boarding/gate monitor and the announcement, I get this “message” to get in line. I’m listening to these messages more and more, let me tell you.
I get in line figuring that the worst they can do is yell, and sure enough, it is my plane, and everything else was incorrect. I board the flight and a man a few years older than me starts up a conversation in excellent English. He asks where I’m going and I say Rishikesh, and he says how from Delhi, and I say probably bus, but I’m not sure. This guy gets on his phone does a search and calls a listing while we’re on the tarmac. He writes down some info on a barf bag and tells me that I want a Volvo bus and that they leave from Connaught Place in New Delhi and the Red Fort in Old Delhi, and that they leave at 9p and arrive about 6a the next morning. I couldn’t believe how helpful this guy was. We ended up having a nice conversation for most of the trip, and as we left the ground in Varanasi, I felt a sense of relief.
I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I knew I wasn’t in Varanasi anymore.
Flight was uneventful, though maybe because of the heat, there seems to be more turbulence. We land (still no phone mind you, the fam thinks I’m still in Varanasi and has no idea about Rishikesh because it all happened after I lost contact), I retrieve my bag and I’m on the hunt for the AirTel shop. I go to the information desk and ask. He says they don’t have an AirTel booth. I said, yes you do, because I bought a sim and airtime there on the way into the country. He says, ohhh.. yeah, that’s the international terminal and you’re at the domestic terminal. That’s 7 kilometers away. … Oh… ok. I guess.
I see an ATM and think I better get some money because I’m running lower than I’d like to be on cash. ATM won’t take my card, but I have enough to get a pre-paid cab to Connaught Place, and as it’s a huge shopping hub, I’m sure there will be one close. Driver is nice, but can’t find the Government Emporia or the AirTel, so I just get out near KFC, because I remember at least the guy on the plane saying that the travel agent was near it.
Bus travel and all travel for that matter are run by little travel agencies, and I mean little. I didn’t find the original guy’s shop, but about every 10 shops or so, it seems like there is a travel agent booth. The one I ended up at was about 8 feet by 6 feet and had a bench, two small desks and chairs, and all the requisite office equipment: laptop, log books, large laser printer, etc., though no air-conditioning, as it was open to the outside.
I book the AC bus with the company for 600rs ($12) and am told to be back at 8:30p. No problem.
I walk towards the busiest part of Connaught (all with my big pack of course), and up comes the first tout. “Halllooooo, sir. What country?” “America. Where is the AirTel store?” “Oh sure, sir. I ask no money. It is my day off. I will show you.” He leads me to the AirTel store where they tell me my $50 US dollars are gone inside two weeks with probably 2 calls and the equivalent of maybe a tenth of the data I should’ve had. I’m in there for 25 minutes trying to figure out what’s going on, and end up recharging with $60 more (10GB of data and 1000rs of talk). I think I got jammed along the way somewhere because it simply doesn’t add up. Regardless, he shows me he put the credit on my account, and shows me how to check the balance to verify, which I do and he is correct.
The tout has come into the AirTel store and waited though I told him I didn’t need him anymore and thank you. Out he comes with me, so I ask him where the ATM is. He is a small guy and I will likely break him if I tried, so I am not really worried about a robbery, and besides, I get more of a scoundrel vibe from him than a robbery or violent crime vibe.
He leads me to the ATM and I successfully get money. I tell him I’d like to go to the fixed price Government Emporia. Oh sure. Over here, sir. I’m thinking at this point, I will actually give this man money as he has helped me quite a bit. I thought too soon. He leads me to a place which is not what I am looking for and becomes persistent when I refuse to enter. I tell him he has mislead me and I am not happy. He says look inside for 20 minutes and then he will show me the real place (the touts get commission on whatever I buy). I start walking away, and he grabs the map which I grab back. He says ok, he will show me where I want to go. We are going in generally the right direction, but are making too many direction changes. I pull out my phone (which now works), and fire up the GPS which gives me an approximate area which is not where I want to be. I get my bearings, and tell the tout to get lost.
This process is repeated 3 or 4 times, sometimes corroborated by other people (who end up being touts themselves). “Sir, I am helping because you are in my country. When I come to America, you will help me?” I walk way too far on too hot a day. Even the UP Government Tourist office is only marginally helpful and not very friendly as I don’t want to book a tour with them.
I end up getting lost with the help of a tout, but finally find it with the help of some nicely dressed young professional women who were very polite and kind. The problem is that you can spot about half the touts, the other half you can’t, not at least at this stage. Maybe if I lived in Delhi for a couple months, I’d be able to, but not at my experience level. So I just have to ride it out, and ask a lot of people, and shrug it off when I walk for 20 minutes in the wrong direction led by a turd.
I am overheated by this point and have no water. I find a stand who charges me 50 rupees for the smallest two bottles of juice I have ever seen retail. The next stand I get a 1 liter bottle of water for 15 rupees. Prices have some amazing flexibility. I wonder what an Indian would be paying for that juice or water.
I look around the shops on the two full blocks of Government Emporia just off the circle (how did no one know where this was?) and everything I like is either heavy or too expensive. There were some absolutely stunning needle-work things, but they were all very expensive, and I’d have to carry them. I went into about 10 shops just to find a Manjushree figurine, but no such luck. They would all say, this too is Manjushree just without a sword. Not buying it brother, that’s Shiva, wrong religion.
I ask around for the post office which should be here somewhere, and I find it after a few more touts and well-meaning but misguided regular people. I go into the post office to see about shipping some stuff back. I figure I have up to 3 pounds of stuff I’d like to send back and every pound counts when it’s on your back. If it was cheap stuff, I’d just throw it away and rebuy it when I got home, but I don’t want to pitch the specialized camera batteries, etc. There are probably 20 people in line for one window at the post office and several other windows open with people in there. I look at the people in the line, and from what I can tell from this post office and the one in Nainital, people pay bills here too, and wire money, etc. None of the people in the line had a package, and so I go up to one of the windows with someone probably playing solitaire on the computer. I ask if I can send a package to America from here, all she says is “get in line”, which I assume means, for my answer, not yes. I get in line and young man starts asking questions, but in a weird way like he is messing with me. I ask if I can ship a package from here, he says show me what you want to ship. I say its in the pack, but it’s about this big and measure the equivalent of a large shoe box with my hands. He says, well, what are you going to put it in. I say, do they sell boxes here. He says, no. I ask where I can find one. He says, we are in the biggest market in Delhi, you find out for yourself, or the equivalent.
I decide to go find a box, and there are several touts ready to mislead me on my goal. One says go to General Store, and another the wine store. I follow the wine store guy, and the owner of the wine store has some words with the tout and no box. I walk away and decide I didn’t want to ship anything home anyway. I rather like the extra weight. It’s probably a good thing anyway, because as I was missing my family, the price I was willing to spend on a souvenir kept increasing in proportion to the degree of miss-ing-ness.
I found a place which looked like an upscale McDonald’s but for chicken, and it said it had veg stuff in there. I ordered a veg wrap and fries and an orange drink (which tasted distinctly Indian, the orange drink that is). I lazed around in the upstairs air-conditioning eating as slowly as possible, even after I was full, because I didn’t know when I would eat again, and I can’t eat much in the heat.
I left the restaurant, got a bit lost, and then got a rickshaw for a confirmed 15 rupees to the intersection I needed (a few blocks away). As the guy was nice, I was planning on tipping him, until he decided 15 was really 50 with a bad accent. I paid for the few minute ride and no tip (one of these times, I’m gonna stiff them), and about an hour an a half early, I head over to the travel booth. I sit down, and ask if I can charge my phone up, and they agree. I end up having good conversations with all 3 people that work there.
8:30 comes and goes and every 15 minutes that pass, I start feeling like I’m never gonna get out of Delhi. The main guy I’m talking with and having such good conversation with is making many, many calls to the bus guy and other people (sometimes on two landlines and his cell phone simultaneously), and my bus finally shows up an hour and a half late. I run out the door to catch it; the man has sent a runner to hold the bus and tells me he will be right there, but the bus leaves as soon as I get on, and I don’t get a chance to say goodbye or thanks for the hard work.
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