Ready for the Himalayas

Hi again, it's time for another update before I jump on a train to the mountains. The other 17 University of Washington students arrived the day before yesterday, so I moved into a new hotel to meet them. This one is much nicer than any I've seen so far, though I wonder how much we're paying for it. It's in a more upscale neighborhood with expensive shops and trendy lounges, but still poverty, pollution, and chaos line every street. Mostly because of the pollution, I'm quite anxious to be leaving Delhi today. To ride an auto-rickshaw to another neighborhood for shopping is to breath nothing but exhaust for 20 minutes. To get out of a taxi and walk around is to breath nothing but thick, sticky air until you find a shop A/C. But A/C is dry and aggravates the cold I caught a couple days ago. If I could live in a personal bubble of cool, Seattle air, then Delhi would be a pleasant place to be. I can't even imagine what it would have been like 10 years ago before they switched all the vehicles to compressed natural gas and banned diesel trucks.

The members of my group are all very friendly. The others have only had about two days to explore the city, so they're frantically moving about to see sights and do last-minute shopping. Because Nathan and I have spent a week in the city and know a little Hindi, we've achieved a sort of celebrity status helping the others. Most shopkeepers speak very broken English, and you're lucky to find a rickshaw-walaa who speaks any at all. Another girl, Monisha, also has taken a year of Hindi and will join Nathan and me as the only three second-year-Hindi students.

There are two important aspects of Delhi that I've not yet told you about. The first is the constant chaos of the roads, which only a select few four-letter words can describe. Delhi's many neighborhoods are connected by large roads, usually six lanes wide. But marked lanes are completely meaningless here — why restrict yourself to six lanes of traffic when 18 can squeeze into the same space? In heavy traffic, cars never have more than twelve inches to spare on either side. Rickshaws are much narrower than even the super-compact cars here, so motorcycles fill the gaps. Most people drive with their side-view mirrors folded back. Each and every car, truck, rickshaw, motorcycle, and pedestrian — as well as the occasional cow — shares the road by constantly ducking and weaving, swerving, braking, and accelerating, in a chaotic dance. Individual vehicles move relatively slowly, 15-40kph, but traffic as a whole hardly ever stops.

I'm convinced that this "non-system" is actually more efficient than American road rules. When a truck (or cow) breaks down in the middle of the road, traffic simply flows around. Discounting drunken driving after dark, it is apparently safer to drive here, too. Traffic seems to achieve roughly the same average speed, but the top speed is slower and therefore less deadly. Anything imaginable can happen at any moment, but everything imaginable is completely anticipated. Pedestrians need not wait for a special signal when they can cross safely between moving cars. Finally, Indian drivers never stop blowing their horns. This not only eliminates the need for side-view mirrors, but makes sure that every vehicle is constantly aware of the exact position of every other.

The other story I wanted to tell is about a couple of little punks Nathan and I met at the Delhi Zoo (दिल्ली चिड़ियाघर, dillī chiṛiyāghar, or "birdhouse"). Soon after we entered the gate, we were approached by two little kids, probably 12 years old. We've found that it is not abnormal for Indians at touristy monuments to approach and ask to take pictures with us, as if the two westerners are as much of a spectacle as the monuments. The kids then proceeded to give us a little tour of the zoo, which also is not unusual as most Indians are very friendly and helpful, especially to westerners who can speak a little Hindi. But fairly quickly we realized that these two kids seemed to be spending a little too much time asking us about our cameras and the contents of our pockets. At first their tour was helpful, but next thing we know they are trying to lead us on a roundabout path back to the exit instead of to the larger animal exhibits. They ran the perfect scam — wearing schoolboy outfits and backpacks (though their lack of any English skills should have tipped us off that they weren't students), and they tried to make us comfortable with their expertise as guides, and with their hands being around our bags. They also started begging for money to disguise their motive. If they had gotten us to the exit, surely they would have grabbed our stuff and ran. These are apparently the first pick-pockets I've encountered, but it's no surprise that less wary travelers could easily fall for the scam.

But we didn't fall for it, so as I pack up this morning I find myself safe and sound, complete with all my money and belongings. The crickets chirping in my hotel room are getting a little annoying, so I'm going to wrap this up and eat some breakfast. We're told that there will be internet access in the mountains, but it sounds like it will be in the form of a single cell-phone connection which we'll all have to share. So I'll continue writing stories about my adventures, and posting them periodically, but it might not be possible to upload any pictures for a while. I've had regular internet access in Delhi but the connections are dog slow and so unstable that I haven't been able to upload a single photo. I'll keep trying, and in the meantime, stay in touch.

-Peter