Note to the reader: This is a continuation of a larger odyssey, starting with the entry The Indian Empire Strikes Back. That itself is the sequel to my prior trip to Asia, starting with The Saga Begins (again). Yeah, it's a lot of stuff about a coward's journey through scary Asian countries and cultures, but it's not your average travel blog. You can get by without reading what came before this entry, but it does my heart good to see the page hit counts go up. :)
In case you missed it, this is part 2. Part 1 of the Great Escape comes before part 2. There is even a part 3 coming. Ideally.
# # #
Arriving in New Delhi just after midnight, step one was to get my checked luggage. The signs pointed to carousel number 9, which I found and stood at just the right spot to see the bags drop from the shoot until rude person after rude person decided that there was room to stand right in front of me, forcing me to reposition myself for optimal surveillance.
The screen above this carousel took a while to show our flight - maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Then after 5 more minutes, our flight disappeared from this screen. After another 10 minutes it reappeared for 2 minutes and then left again, apparently in a rage quit. I was almost ready to go ask where the bags for my flight were going to be when I saw it: the carousel, its rotating floor parts clad in the purest shimmering silmite, held aloft my suitcase from the bosom of the luggage shoot, signifying by divine providence that I, Scott, was to carry Samsonite.
One's mind wanders when waiting for one's checked luggage.
Anyway, I got my bag and exited the airport with the need to find a taxi to take me to the hotel I booked for the night. Once again, upon exiting the baggage claim area I am accosted by numerous folks claiming to want to help me attain a taxi ride. Being a seasoned traveller now, I am too wise for these swindlers, and I pass by and through their midst with a simple “no” and a wave of the hand learned from studying under Master Kenobi.
Aside from ignoring the plethora of false taxi scammers, my plan is to go to the taxi queue and get an airport-sanctioned ride like a civilized traveler. The flaw in this plan is that there does not seem to be the expected airport taxi queue system at work here, rather there are two types of taxi acquisition procedures.
The first one I see is the “pre-paid taxi” option. This is well-advertised and leads one to a glorified ticket booth possessing two windows for minimally parallel processing of the apparently constant demand for its dubious mode of transport. There are two lines of people standing there. I note its presence but move on for option #2.
The second option is the regular taxi option where you pay once you get to your destination. However, instead of a queue there is an area one goes and hails a ride from a conspicuous absence of available cabs. In this area, in clear rebellion to civilized taxi queue behavior, is a mob of people all competing simultaneously for the few taxi cabs that deign to cater to this crowd.
I do not like the idea of competing with a mob where I do not even know the rules, and so option #1 now becomes my only option. I thus approach the pre-paid taxi hut and begin to ponder its mysteries. It is not obvious how this is supposed to work, but I queue myself up and begin observing the behavior of those in front of me.
What I’m looking for is an indication of where these cabs are for which we’re all queued up to pre-pay. I cannot spot anything that looks obviously like a set of cabs waiting for us, so I watch the folks in front of me to see where they go after they procure their ticket. After each spends some time at the window they go around the left of the building toward the back and then seem to disappear. This is either a good thing (the taxis are there but out of my line of sight) or a bad thing (the people are being added to a large pile of corpses behind the ticket shack). Only time will tell.
My turn arrives. I show them the destination address. I pay the fee. I’m given a torn piece of pink paper with cryptic scrawl on it as a receipt and then am impatiently waved away.
Jedi tricks work only on the weak-minded. I do not go away. I lean in.
“Where do I go?” I ask.
I am first answered by a look of scorn and contempt. Clearly one capable of pre-paying for a taxi should not be so stupid. “Go around to the back,” I’m told.
Riiiight. I was hoping for something a little more concrete.
So, I and my wheeled suitcase make the journey around to the back where immediately I’m approached by a stranger who reaches for said suitcase. I do not let go of my precious belongings and ask him to explain what he thinks he is doing. He points to the "receipt" in my hand and gestures toward a group of non-taxi-looking cars parked nearby.
I am reminded of the warnings my mother gave me when I was little.
My “stranger danger” alarm is going off at full blast, but as I survey the scene I recognize the guy who had been in front of me in line now getting into one of these cars, so I decide to take the chance.
I let go of the suitcase with the intent to stick to it like a leech on a redneck's back after his summer bath.
We walk up to what looks like a mini-minivan with a rack on the roof. Compared to minivans we Americans are used to, it is smaller in every dimension: height, length, width and safety.
The interior has been classed-up, however, with all of the seats elegantly covered by white hotel towels with large safety-pins to hold them to the seats.
The guy with my suitcase attempts to fit my luggage into the trunk but the trunk is not big enough. It’s not that my bag is that big – it is a medium-sized wheeled suitcase – but the trunk is really that small.
So he tosses it up on the roof in the rack and secures it with gravity. That sounds more high-tech than it really is. And it is a lot less high-tech than I wish it was.
He who so gently tossed my bag up on the roof of this hotwheel-sized mini-taxi then opens the door to the back seat and rolls down the window. At first I think this is a nice gesture for my benefit since I’m already sweating in the New Delhi night heat, but as I get in and they close the door, I quickly perceive the truth behind this kindness as it has given them a “window of opportunity.”
I get in and they close the door. The driver also gets in.
The bag boy and one of his friends are now standing there at the window, staring at me.
"All set?" I ask, knowing what they really want but not wanting to be maneuvered so.
The luggage tosser rubs fingers together and mutters something about him being a productive assistant. The driver, meanwhile, is concentrating on taking his time doing a complicated pre-flight procedure, obviously buying time for these swindlers.
Ok, fine... I whip out the wallet.
"Country money, country money!" the two tossers begin chanting. This could be interpreted to mean either that they want Indian Rupees or else money from my home country. I can see the greed in their eyes as it reflects the airport terminal lights in the shape of dollar signs, so I know what they really want. And they ain't gettin' it.
I fish through my still-substantial wad of rupee cash and hand them two 10 rupee notes. It is the lowest-denomination of bills that I possess. I’m seasoned enough in the exchange rates now to know this amounts to about 30 cents American. As I do this, they lean in and see inside my wallet and say "no, 100, 100!" They are asking for an outrageous $1.50 now. Truly preposterous.
I hand them the 20 rupees and firmly say "NO" in response to their polite demands. It’s not that I’m Scrooge and loathe to part with these hard-earned rupees. I just don’t like their attitude and want to let them know it. Why 20 rupees? I feel it is more insulting to give them a pittance than it is to give them nothing at all.
At this they walk away, giving me one last look that says I’m a greedy American tourist and they will use this pittance to feed only 1 of their 8 starving children.
With their departure, the driver coincidentally finishes the pre-flight and we’re off. He says he knows where the hotel is, and according to Google Maps which I've readied for my own comfort and sanity, he is heading in the right general direction. My only concern now is the ill-secured suitcase on top of the vehicle as we race around sharp turns and bounce over speed bump after speed bump on the way out of the airport.
Until we get lost.
The hotel is in the middle of what looks like an industrial park with an extensive grid of streets, some of which are barricaded and impassible, others which are barricaded but not sufficiently so to stop my resourceful driver. His navigational choices begin to betray an obvious sense of cluelessness.
I lean forward and show him my smartphone and its clear directional indicators pointing the way to our destination.
He looks at this closely, even taking it from my hand to examine its pixel-perfect representation of our current location and the turns ahead we should take. He then hands it back and proceeds to take wrong turn after wrong turn. What makes this more comical is that he is listening to music on the radio that sounds very much like the Chipmunks singing something to Indian-style music accompanied by a woman singing in Hindi after inhaling helium from a balloon. I feel like I should be in a 1940s Disney cartoon with the music, the mini-minivan, my luggage sliding and bouncing around on the top, the bumps, the wild turns, and being lost in the industrial park.
He stops and asks directions no less than five times before he arrives at the right gate to get into the hotel. Once the security team is convinced we are not terrorists, which they verify using a long-eared bloodhound dog who looks to have been trained during the first world war to sniff out bombs, they open the gate, my driver pops the clutch and stalls the "car," and after a coughing engine restart we pull up into the hotel's entryway. He immediately gets out and pulls my suitcase from the roof (thankfully still there!) and looks at me expectantly.
Um... no. I don’t think so.
I take my suitcase, turn my back on him in the Klingon ritual of disaccommodation, and enter the hotel.
Like the Leela, customer service here is impeccable, even at 2am on Friday night. A bellman takes my bag and the check-in clerk takes me up to my room to check me in, making sure my bag arrives there at the same time as I. The check-in procedure is quick and painless, and I’m soon preparing for bed.
I’m so tired at this point I nearly make the fatal mistake of brushing my teeth using the tap water, but true paranoia is ever-vigilant, and I catch myself in time to use the bottled water.
Thus prepared, I sleep with an alarm set for 7am, knowing that some sacrifice of sleep will be necessary to make tomorrow’s final egress from India unhurried and untroubled.
I quickly fall into the sleep of the overly-confident, having had phases one and two of my escape-from-India plans execute with precision and grace. The stage for phase three is set. The pawns are positioned and my bishops poised to strike. Check and mate in 3 moves, India. Your move. Do your worst.
You can't win.
Cuz I’m a planner.
In case you missed it, this is part 2. Part 1 of the Great Escape comes before part 2. There is even a part 3 coming. Ideally.
# # #
Arriving in New Delhi just after midnight, step one was to get my checked luggage. The signs pointed to carousel number 9, which I found and stood at just the right spot to see the bags drop from the shoot until rude person after rude person decided that there was room to stand right in front of me, forcing me to reposition myself for optimal surveillance.
The screen above this carousel took a while to show our flight - maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Then after 5 more minutes, our flight disappeared from this screen. After another 10 minutes it reappeared for 2 minutes and then left again, apparently in a rage quit. I was almost ready to go ask where the bags for my flight were going to be when I saw it: the carousel, its rotating floor parts clad in the purest shimmering silmite, held aloft my suitcase from the bosom of the luggage shoot, signifying by divine providence that I, Scott, was to carry Samsonite.
 |
| That is why I am your king. |
Anyway, I got my bag and exited the airport with the need to find a taxi to take me to the hotel I booked for the night. Once again, upon exiting the baggage claim area I am accosted by numerous folks claiming to want to help me attain a taxi ride. Being a seasoned traveller now, I am too wise for these swindlers, and I pass by and through their midst with a simple “no” and a wave of the hand learned from studying under Master Kenobi.
 |
| This isn't the sucker you're looking for. Move along. |
The first one I see is the “pre-paid taxi” option. This is well-advertised and leads one to a glorified ticket booth possessing two windows for minimally parallel processing of the apparently constant demand for its dubious mode of transport. There are two lines of people standing there. I note its presence but move on for option #2.
The second option is the regular taxi option where you pay once you get to your destination. However, instead of a queue there is an area one goes and hails a ride from a conspicuous absence of available cabs. In this area, in clear rebellion to civilized taxi queue behavior, is a mob of people all competing simultaneously for the few taxi cabs that deign to cater to this crowd.
I do not like the idea of competing with a mob where I do not even know the rules, and so option #1 now becomes my only option. I thus approach the pre-paid taxi hut and begin to ponder its mysteries. It is not obvious how this is supposed to work, but I queue myself up and begin observing the behavior of those in front of me.
What I’m looking for is an indication of where these cabs are for which we’re all queued up to pre-pay. I cannot spot anything that looks obviously like a set of cabs waiting for us, so I watch the folks in front of me to see where they go after they procure their ticket. After each spends some time at the window they go around the left of the building toward the back and then seem to disappear. This is either a good thing (the taxis are there but out of my line of sight) or a bad thing (the people are being added to a large pile of corpses behind the ticket shack). Only time will tell.
My turn arrives. I show them the destination address. I pay the fee. I’m given a torn piece of pink paper with cryptic scrawl on it as a receipt and then am impatiently waved away.
Jedi tricks work only on the weak-minded. I do not go away. I lean in.
“Where do I go?” I ask.
I am first answered by a look of scorn and contempt. Clearly one capable of pre-paying for a taxi should not be so stupid. “Go around to the back,” I’m told.
Riiiight. I was hoping for something a little more concrete.
So, I and my wheeled suitcase make the journey around to the back where immediately I’m approached by a stranger who reaches for said suitcase. I do not let go of my precious belongings and ask him to explain what he thinks he is doing. He points to the "receipt" in my hand and gestures toward a group of non-taxi-looking cars parked nearby.
I am reminded of the warnings my mother gave me when I was little.
 |
| Seems legit. |
I let go of the suitcase with the intent to stick to it like a leech on a redneck's back after his summer bath.
We walk up to what looks like a mini-minivan with a rack on the roof. Compared to minivans we Americans are used to, it is smaller in every dimension: height, length, width and safety.
 |
| Even the tires are "mini." |
The guy with my suitcase attempts to fit my luggage into the trunk but the trunk is not big enough. It’s not that my bag is that big – it is a medium-sized wheeled suitcase – but the trunk is really that small.
So he tosses it up on the roof in the rack and secures it with gravity. That sounds more high-tech than it really is. And it is a lot less high-tech than I wish it was.
He who so gently tossed my bag up on the roof of this hotwheel-sized mini-taxi then opens the door to the back seat and rolls down the window. At first I think this is a nice gesture for my benefit since I’m already sweating in the New Delhi night heat, but as I get in and they close the door, I quickly perceive the truth behind this kindness as it has given them a “window of opportunity.”
I get in and they close the door. The driver also gets in.
The bag boy and one of his friends are now standing there at the window, staring at me.
"All set?" I ask, knowing what they really want but not wanting to be maneuvered so.
The luggage tosser rubs fingers together and mutters something about him being a productive assistant. The driver, meanwhile, is concentrating on taking his time doing a complicated pre-flight procedure, obviously buying time for these swindlers.
Ok, fine... I whip out the wallet.
"Country money, country money!" the two tossers begin chanting. This could be interpreted to mean either that they want Indian Rupees or else money from my home country. I can see the greed in their eyes as it reflects the airport terminal lights in the shape of dollar signs, so I know what they really want. And they ain't gettin' it.
I fish through my still-substantial wad of rupee cash and hand them two 10 rupee notes. It is the lowest-denomination of bills that I possess. I’m seasoned enough in the exchange rates now to know this amounts to about 30 cents American. As I do this, they lean in and see inside my wallet and say "no, 100, 100!" They are asking for an outrageous $1.50 now. Truly preposterous.
I hand them the 20 rupees and firmly say "NO" in response to their polite demands. It’s not that I’m Scrooge and loathe to part with these hard-earned rupees. I just don’t like their attitude and want to let them know it. Why 20 rupees? I feel it is more insulting to give them a pittance than it is to give them nothing at all.
At this they walk away, giving me one last look that says I’m a greedy American tourist and they will use this pittance to feed only 1 of their 8 starving children.
 |
| Uh huh. I saw Total Recall. I know this scam. |
Until we get lost.
The hotel is in the middle of what looks like an industrial park with an extensive grid of streets, some of which are barricaded and impassible, others which are barricaded but not sufficiently so to stop my resourceful driver. His navigational choices begin to betray an obvious sense of cluelessness.
I lean forward and show him my smartphone and its clear directional indicators pointing the way to our destination.
He looks at this closely, even taking it from my hand to examine its pixel-perfect representation of our current location and the turns ahead we should take. He then hands it back and proceeds to take wrong turn after wrong turn. What makes this more comical is that he is listening to music on the radio that sounds very much like the Chipmunks singing something to Indian-style music accompanied by a woman singing in Hindi after inhaling helium from a balloon. I feel like I should be in a 1940s Disney cartoon with the music, the mini-minivan, my luggage sliding and bouncing around on the top, the bumps, the wild turns, and being lost in the industrial park.
He stops and asks directions no less than five times before he arrives at the right gate to get into the hotel. Once the security team is convinced we are not terrorists, which they verify using a long-eared bloodhound dog who looks to have been trained during the first world war to sniff out bombs, they open the gate, my driver pops the clutch and stalls the "car," and after a coughing engine restart we pull up into the hotel's entryway. He immediately gets out and pulls my suitcase from the roof (thankfully still there!) and looks at me expectantly.
Um... no. I don’t think so.
 |
| No tip for you! |
Like the Leela, customer service here is impeccable, even at 2am on Friday night. A bellman takes my bag and the check-in clerk takes me up to my room to check me in, making sure my bag arrives there at the same time as I. The check-in procedure is quick and painless, and I’m soon preparing for bed.
I’m so tired at this point I nearly make the fatal mistake of brushing my teeth using the tap water, but true paranoia is ever-vigilant, and I catch myself in time to use the bottled water.
Thus prepared, I sleep with an alarm set for 7am, knowing that some sacrifice of sleep will be necessary to make tomorrow’s final egress from India unhurried and untroubled.
I quickly fall into the sleep of the overly-confident, having had phases one and two of my escape-from-India plans execute with precision and grace. The stage for phase three is set. The pawns are positioned and my bishops poised to strike. Check and mate in 3 moves, India. Your move. Do your worst.
You can't win.
Cuz I’m a planner.
 |
| And every plan survives first contact with the enemy. |
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