And people.
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Sixth day in a very busy city.
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We found a nice place to eat today called the English Diner, so we had dinner in the same place. It's small, maybe 8 or 10 tables, not fancy, tv showing cricket, the national sport. Policemen eat there. We were the only foreigners. Lunch for two 240 rupies, diner 220 rupies. Total 7 Eur. During dinner 4 kids came in. They looked homeless and wanted to trade a few USD for rupies. After some talk with the employees they got what they wanted. Before they left they asked for some food, which they also got poured in a small plastic bag and a small container.After hours of walking I sit to listen to traditional music. Voices and drums. Suddenly a very loud thunder sound wakes me up and makes me write these words. Rain is coming soon. We are at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts which today had a varied programme. Ritual demonstrations with hypnotic voices and drums. When the rains starts we go inside to watch a photo exhibition. The colonial age, princes, kings, architecture. I was sad to see how some people enjoyed killing tigers and then posing with them.On the way to the arts centre we were suprised by people playing cricket. Most of the players were in an alley with no traffic. But two players were next to us, with a 4 lane avenue separating us from the guy throwing the ball (pitcher?). Since he faced away from us he had no clue about the traffic situation. At times the ball would fly into the yard of a neighboring house. Other times it would cross the avenue landing next to use. A player then had to run with the ball avoiding cars and busses. I guess it made the game more exciting this way. I saw a pet monkey biting his rope. He looked like a miniature human to me.All windows have mosquito nets in this apartment, and all glass sheets are open, so the air is very fresh and the temperature the same as outside. Same sounds too. Airplanes fly over frequently. I like the sound they make, which is different to previous planes I've heard. I also hear distant people, birds and religious calls during the day, dogs, cars going backwards (which also sound like birds to make people aware of them). Normally I prefer silence but here I enjoy the sounds. Maybe they add color to these minimally decorated rooms. It's also fun trying to recognise and identify unheard sounds and languages.I remember an intersection with 3 or 4 lanes on each street. No traffic lights! Why did traffic switch turns from one street to the next? It seemed to work. Cars just stopped sometimes to let others go through. Truly amazing.
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Like every morning, after a shower and a banana we leave the apartment and go a few steps down to the street. A ver narrow street with people coming home or leaving to work usually by foot. Walking to the metro takes less than 10 minutes. On the way we see a small park with few people, a vegetable shop, a candy and chips shop, a clothes repair one-man business and a hair dresser, all of them not much bigger than a telephone booth. The wedding tent that used to be there on previous days is now gone, but we've seen many others around the city. Half way to the metro there is a gate and a guard. He never says hi or looks at us. Right after the gate there is the elevated metro line, and some construction work going on below it. Not many people and few machines are doing the work. It looks like some workers have their families with them, including a small half naked girl sitting and playing on top of this gray powder pile. A thin woman lifts tiles to be placed in the side walk.All metro stations have checkpoints for women and men. A guard with machine gun surrounded by piled up sand bags is also always to be seen. Checkpoints have three parts: a metal detector, someone who checks you are carrying no weapons and an x-ray machine for bags. Like in the airport. The metro is very clean. It has power plugs for recharging laptops and cellphones. It's built by Bombardier, like the metro in Berlin. There are women-only wagons, and not many tourists. Writings and announcements are both in Hindi and English. It looks cleaner and people better behaved than in Berlin. Passengers respect no eating and no drinking. No loud nor drunk passengers. No one begging or playing music, no trash, no scratched windows. It calls my attention that there is less distance between guys, they are closer. Friends have their arms over their friend's shoulders, in the leg, or hold hands. If a kid doesn't fit, he may squeeze in between two people, maybe putting his hand on a stranger's leg. I can imagine someone's reaction in western countries if a kid put his hand on the leg of the person next to him :)Coming from Europe, the guy's clothes are sometimes crazy. All kinds of colors, like bright red, pink, green blue or purple. Sometimes shiny. Or combined in what I find strange ways. Sometimes they have orange or red hair. I'm sure some will wonder how can I have such a messy hair, when theirs is always nicely cut and shiny. To enter the metro station you use RFID cards which you hold near the reader. We got a 3 day tourist card for about 4 Eur that ends today. I guess we will get a new one tomorrow.
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The photo with the black water deposits shows the building where we are staying.
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We've been looking for a Barclays Bank office. We ate in the street in a small stand. I take rice that tastes like old oil. I only eat half of it after cleaning the spoon with cleaning spray. We get 1 liter of water and drop a purifying pill in it. We don't finish the food, we give it to two kids that were unsuccesfully trying to buy food with 10 rupies. We walk under the AIIMS hospital. People lie outside on the floor. One guy on a portable bed lies under a tree with something going into his vein. I remember a small kid with no underwear, all dirty of sitting on the street. Solar powered dancing flowers inside parked cars. A poster suggesting the use of condoms for freedom of choice... of time between one child and the next one. Metro in rush hour is an experience. If you're near a door when it stops you are ejected out of it like a champaign cork.
I stand outside a modern temple and see how cars stop, then a guy in uniform accompanies passengers to the temple. Other people passing by stop, touch the floor with their hands, then puts them together in front of their mouths, touch head and ears, then leave. I wonder what they feel. Some do these gestures from their motorbikes which they stop in front of the temple for a minute.Small squirrels moving very fast climb the trees. Trees in random streets have sometimes flowers, pictures and presents under them.We bought different vegetables in a tiny shop in our neighborhood for 15 rupees. We are now cooking them with rice. It was strange to see our neighborhood revealed under the sunshine today without any fog. -
View from a metro station, somewhere between Dwarka and the center.
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The first thing I wondered after we landed was why things looked foggy. I thought of pollution and lack of sleep. Alva also saw foggy, even inside the terminal. We exchanged and pre-paid 370 rupies (6 euros) for a taxi to take us to our CouchSurfing host. We are in a remote land in the middle of the night, and in front of us this micro-van with no seat belts and a driver with a scarf around his head. All windows have Nike logos, including a big logo in the middle of the front windshield. We drive at fast-horse speed in a road while cars around us honk and leave us behind. We were still discussing whether it was pollution or fog until we were lost in it. One couldn't see farther than 3 meters away, which made the drive much more mysterious. Our driver couldn't find the place, so he stepped out several times, hands in his pockets, head covered in his scarf and asked drivers, people walking, riding bicycles and motorbikes. They all pointed in different directions with their straight arms in a surreal world illuminated by some street lights. When a bike passed us it soon disappeared like a ghost. At times we would drive in reverse to find the road again because ahead of us the road would not continue. It felt like stretching our arms and using our hands to touch the world, because our eyes couldn't see a thing. We used a flash light to illuminate signs on the sides of the road until we found it. We had no idea of where we were. Satyavrat welcomed us very early in the morning, smiling and very awake. After a tea and some talking we went to bed. -
We didn't sleep much last night. We are now ready to take off in Moscow. I've been preparing the trip for many days but for me the trip starts in this moment, right after entering this plane. The first thing I noticed was that the fuselage looks like it's bent. As if the plane was originally shorter and then they changed their mind and glued an extension to make it longer. Like two macaroni pieces glued together.That would explain why my window seat has no window: I must be seating in the glued zone.The second thing many of us noticed is that the seat numbers are not above the seats, but in the back of the seat. In the back of the seat in front of you, not in the back of your seat. Many of us got it wrong so we all had to change places. I suspect one of the stewardesses is a robot. She doesn't blink or smile. The toilet looks like imported from an old train. The toilet seat is made of wood and the paint is falling off. There is a touch of decadence everywhere. Like a futuristic space ship designed in the 70s forty years later. Some lights don't work and I see cracked electric cables through a crack above our heads. I try to peek through the window in front of me without luck: the wing covers 90% of what I see through that window. The ticket I bought mentioned a window seat Boeing 767. I got a windowless seat on a Ilushin 96, with no screen to watch movies, but with a fan embedded in the front seat. I can turn it on by pressing a button and observe how it spins. I can only grasp a word or two from all the security announcements in Russian or English with Russian accent. I think they probably mentioned that someone will distribute oxygen masks if we order them with enough time. Don't take everything I write too seriously, I didn't sleep enough. Let's see how we find our CouchSurfing host once we arrive to Delhi at 4:30 AM.
