Abject poverty, sheer highway terror, and camels.
I've been outside of the airport for an hour now, and it's been amazingly interesting already. To begin, I found the cab arranged for me from the airport. It's some little 4-door hatchback Tata, proudly proclaiming it's V-2 engine on the side fender. This is where I learned How Indians Drive. Did you know that two of these size cars will fit side-by-side in the same lane? Or that you can more or less get two auto-rickshaws and my cab in the same lane? Or that you only need approximately one meter of clearance between two trucks carrying OMG HUGE SLABS OF STONE to cut between them at 100 kph? Upon learning this, I tried finding my seatbelt. While the belt is there, it was lacking a buckle. Figures.
Anyway, once we got up to speed, traffic is a bit more calm and orderly; you're only sharing a lane with one other car at a time. This gave me the chance to look around. As we were leaving the airport, everything was under construction. Not in the Chicago "everything's under construction Just Because", but because everything is being created where there once was nothing. Vast expanses of red clay, palm trees, and half-built things with their attendant cranes and other construction gear. As we got into the city, things stopped being built, and more like some force had given up on tearing it down. I honestly don't know how to describe it, and something tells me I haven't seen the worst by a long shot.
It's now 10:55 am, March 26th, 2009 (Indian Standard Time), and I just took my shoes off. The last time I took them off, it was around 3pm on the 23rd at O'Hare Airport. I was tempted on trying an international call to my parents, but I just checked my world clock, and it's past midnight where they are. Weird. It doesn't feel like I've just come completely around to the far side of the world. I'd try getting online about now, but the power died to the building just as I was about to connect. Welcome to the 3rd World!
I'm very happy you didn't say 'Borat' when I said I am from Kazakhstan.
The above quote is from a fellow traveler, waiting here in the New Delhi airport for the guards to open the domestic terminal at one in the morning local time. The rest of the in the air was exceedingly uneventful; I had some paneer for breakfast on the plane, and got into the airport around 8:30 Delhi time. The first thing that struck me? AK-47's. Everywhere. American cops have handguns. Indian cops carry AKs. There's also a couple of pintle-mounted machine guns on jeeps around the airport. They also don't look too handy with them, either- in a firefight, I'd be just as worried about the cops shooting me with them as The Bad Guys. Scary. I'd have taken pictures, but picture taking at the airport is Highly Prohibited.
Other than that, there really hasn't been much of a problem. I got my baggage alright, I got my dollars exchanged for rupees alright, and I had a couple of samosas from a "Café Coffee Day" stand, which appears to be a chain similar to perhaps Caribou Coffee, or something else of that nature. I've met up with a few other travelers stuck here for the night- a project management consultant from Austin, TX who's visiting family here, and a recent Soc PhD grad from Ithaca, NY, who is touristing and visiting his girlfriend in Hyderabad, along with my new Kazhak friends. I'm sitting in the old terminal of the airport, which really isn't all too bad; it's very similar to lots of places I've been in back home. The new terminal is very shiny. Lots of marble, steel, and glass. Too bad the airline I'm taking out isn't using that terminal.
I also came across a hot dog stand at the airport. It's interesting, as an American who is used to seeing the American take on other ethnicity's foods, to have that reversed. First thing? The dogs themselves contain neither beef nor pork, are Halal-certified, and produced in an ISO 9001-2000 certified facility. The most directly "American" is the "classic" hot dog, which uses relish, ketchup, and mustard. Given the rest of the menu, I think I could forgive them the ketchup. The "Chicago" style dog... replaces the ketchup for BBQ sauce. Oh, the humanity!. Perhaps on my way out, though, I'll be trying one of their very Indian-style dogs that are more down on the menu.
So far the only downer on the trip has been that my ebook reader got accidentally turned on in my bag, and a key was held down on it, so the battery got nicely drained. I think I might have to re-train the battery before the trip is over.
Now I'm sitting here on an American Airlines 777, somewhere over Michigan. On my way to India. INDIA. I'm going to be there for a month. It's my first time out of the country, and I'm just as terrified as I am excited. It's not like I'm even going to Western Europe, but freaking India. The in-flight informational movies in the seat back are displaying twice: once in English, once in Hindi. It's slightly surreal that this is all happening to begin with. CORRECTION: it's incredibly surreal that I get to go.
I suppose I should start now at the beginning of my trip then, if I wish to blog my travels. My parents took me to O'Hare airport in Chicago today, where they treated me to a marvelous lunch at the Hilton, before seeing me off at the security checkpoint. I managed to put in a couple hours of productivity at the gate while waiting, and then boarded the aircraft. Upon boarding, I discovered I had my part of the row to myself: the isle and the window seats are both mine, all mine!. The headrests have video-on-demand services that are pretty clever; I have a pull-out remote in my armrest that is:
Yes, that's right, the in-flight entertainment includes a personal video game console system. Cool.
This has all been going disturbingly well; my flight from Champaign to Temple, TX last year was much more eventful (in the bad way): the flight from Champaign to Chicago was plenty late enough to make Atul and I miss our flight by seconds. However, here, everything was... smooth. It took me as much time to go through O'Hare security into the American Airlines terminal as it took me to go through security at both Champaign and the Killeen, TX airfields (where I spent more time putting my shoes back on than any other part of the process). I'm rather impressed with everything so far.
Now I'm somewhere over Ontario. This is the first time I've ever crossed an international border in my life. The map says the Great Circle for this trip will be taking me through Russia. I've always wanted to go to Russia. Perhaps sometime I'll take a plane that will land there, instead of keeping me 33,000 feet above it.
A while back, I blogged while taking the Amtrak from Champaign to Chicago, the City of New Orleans. It's one of my all-time favorite songs, and it's simply about his journey, real or imagined, on a train. I'm not aware of anyone having written anything with such feeling and romance for an airplane. Perhaps the starving artists who are most capable of such things don't have the money to take long-haul international flights like the one I'm on enough to get any feeling. The rumble of the engines and the sound of this giant aluminum tube cutting through the air at hundreds of miles per hour don't feel as... "organic" as the gentle nock-nock of the train car. Humans understand Big Strong Things pulling Heavy Stuff distances over land. However, right now... I'm flying It's a wonderful thing, but it's one of the single most unnatural things a human can do. I've been thinking about making an indie rock album for some time now. I suppose a song on airline flight should be on there.
Now I'm over Quebec, after having my first in-flight meal. It's both exactly as and better than I expected. While the details of it are very interesting to me, I suspect you, dear reader, do not wish to read a 5-page essay on the particularities of my meal.
I'm now nearing the Arctic Circle, and I'm beginning to tire of having a laptop here, so I'm going to curl up with my movie. More updates and pictures as they come!