Created: 7th of March
Updated: 16th of May
I get out of bed early after a hellish night, an endless torpor made of the sounds of barking dogs, the commotion of traffic, the burnt smell of pollution and dreamlike memories of a faraway land (a.k.a home).
I spend two days at M's home, which helps me unwind. Not being alone helps with abstracting away the insanity. Of course, outside everything is still the same, but I can joke about it, talk about something else entirely, share thoughts, be reassured... I couldn't get to such a state on my own, with everything around me reminding me of the very thoughts I wished to vanquish.
What better way to numb the soul than to go... shopping? That's right, although it's still an adventure on its own. Of course, we aren't going to walk there, nobody does that here, as long as they can afford it. So we take the car, which is slower than walking for the first kilometer. Colorful trucks, cars, but especially crowded rickshaws, and motorcycles swerving around us. Carts full of merchandise pulled by cows or donkeys, or sometimes men. At this moment, the bigger you are, the slower you go.
We have a couple of errands to run, I won't bore you with the details. Simply be advised that stepping in a shop often feels like stepping into a parallel universe; for example from the chaos to a quiet, clean, nondescript shopping mall, or even to a wedding dress shop, where time flows, somehow, very much slower. At least they give tea and sweets to those who wait.
If you have read my earlier posts, you probably think I've painted a bleak picture of India—rightly so, I guess. But I have to admit that there is something very special to this country, where you can at times find beauty where you least expect it.
Today, when night falls, it changes the mood from crazy to crazy-but-delightfully-kind-of-cyberpunk-although-not-quite, as you can, I hope, attest from these pictures.
A seemingly popular dessert in India is the sizzling brownie. It's served on a hot plate, together with melted chocolate, and vanilla ice-cream on top. The plate is so hot that the chocolate sizzles. Delicious. Don't think about the sugar, shhhhhh.
After two days here, it's time to leave. I'm super grateful to M's family for having hosted me on such a short notice. They were welcoming and warm and kind, and it was a pleasure to experience life from their perspective. Encounters like this one are among the best you can have while traveling.
Leaving... leaving to where? Together with A, we are going to New Delhi, in order to meet some of his acquaintances and travel for two weeks. For this, we have hired a driver that will be with us for the whole trip: VJ. It's a very common thing to do here, when traveling in groups, and quite cheap.
Yes, it does feel quite weird to have a servant who's available all the time. But it is normal here, and among the many things one has to get used to.
We say goodbye and leave. Aligarh is not a very big city—by Indian standards—but amidst the traffic, we need one hour to get out of it. We spend maybe four hours in the car, before arriving in New Delhi. We have to grab the newcomers from the airport, before getting to our accommodation.
We are staying at the Hotel Nature View Green Park, a five-minute-walk away from Deer Park. It's a relatively calm and almost posh neighborhood. It's already night when we get to the location shown on Google Maps, but the hotel is nowhere to be found, we can't see any sign.
That's because there is no sign, and the hotel doesn't look like a hotel: it looks like every other building in the street. It was probably never meant to be a hotel in the first place. The entrance is a garage door, and the reception is found on the first floor, above a flight of grey stairs. As usual, the staff takes our passports, and proceeds to copy every detail in a giant notebook.
My room is directly opposite the reception. It's not very clean (there's plenty of dust and plastic wrappings under the bed), but I wasn't hoping for much better anyway.
Dinner is taken at The Piano Man, a nearby jazz club. A bluegrass concert is ongoing, which together with the burger, almost make me forget I'm in India (although there's no beef in the burger).
We'll get to experience a few places in New Delhi over the next couple of days. See you next week for part four!
