India- A whole 'nother world

Yes, it is really true. India is very different. And exhausting. And polluted. And loud. And crazy. But, also fascinating and so far, I've been really just laughing at some of the insanity. Plus, I've had Joanna (my friend from college0 and a bunch of her expat friends to help me, so the past two days have been really easy for me. They negotiate the taxis and tell them where to go. I'm staying in Joanna's second bedroom. She's got a french press and Peet's coffee, not to mention cable, a wii, dvr, washing machine, internet and a computer I can use. Overall, this is the best I've had it in months.
But, I'm heading off tomorrow to the Taj Mahal and then I think out to Jaisalmer where you can ride a camel and sleep in the desert.

So, here's how my first two days went. First off, Air India may possibly be the most classicaly Indian Airline in the world. About two weeks ago I get a message that they have changed my flight schedule instead of leaving Bangkok at 9:40am, laying over in Bombay and getting to Delhi that evening, oh they changed it to leave Bangkok at 6:30pm, lay over in Bombay over night and then fly to Delhi in the morning. Just getting in touch with them and communicating what was happening was a nightmare in itself of buying credit for my phone, trying to call chicago during business hours and being put on hold forever as I think of my credit ticking away. So, even though I fought with them, they wouldn't give me a different itinerary. Thus, I did enjoy a number of hours in the Bombay airport between 2-6am whereby I couldn't find an ATM and they only took Rupees so I was so parched my lips were drying out. I mean, they have these kiosks with information about the airport, the weather, news headlines, even games you can play while you are waiting, but no ATM. This is an international airport. And yes they have money exchange booths, but not open at that hour. For sake of brevity, here is the list of how my flight with Air India went.
-5:00pm bus to BKK airport
-6:30pm arrive at airport, check in, asked where my flight printout is, well they never emailed me a new one, so that was impossible to have, three different people have to work on pulling up my flight info since for some reason, my passport isn't enough for an e-ticket
-7:30 go through security
-8:00 board the plane-apparently the idea of calling by rows doesn't exist in Asia, they just sort of all bumrush. I was one of three non-indian people on my plane. Everyone else seemed to be on some sort of corporate retreat or something with matching bags. They were constantly taking pictures of each other in the airport and on the plane until the flight attendant announced they weren't allowed to do that.
Get on the plane, they are all switching seats without waiting to see if someone is in that seat and the flight attendant is getting angry. He keeps telling them to go back to their seats.
Plane starts to take off, this woman decides, oh there's a middle seat next to her friend in my row, clearly she should move there. So she just walks over and starts climbing over me. No discussion or excuse me or anything. I'm like hold on, I'll move across the way.
Fly to Mumbai, it is all fine until we get there and have to circle the airport for a full hour.
12:30 am-land, everyone hops up and starts clamoring to get off. Guy behind me hits my butt to get me to move out of the way! Excuse me. Oh, since we were so late, we have to wait for stairs to attach to the plane and busses to come get us.
1:00am-I'm not kidding, half an hour later, we can get off. Take a bus for 20 minutes to the terminal! Seriously.
1:20am-go through immigration, oh but first you have to go through this ridiculous line where you hand over your swine flu card stating that you don't have it. It gets stamped and then you bring it with you to immigration. All these Indian men are trying to jump the line.
2:00am-collect luggage, go to a domestic connection waiting area. Show my flight info to a guy behind an Air India counter, another guy standing next to him, plus the guy who showed me over to him.
Guy #1: Where are you going?
Me:Delhi
Guy #1: Looks at my paper, searches the computer.
Guy #2Where are you going?
Me:Delhi
Guy #1: searches the computer some more, speaks in Hindi to guy #2.
Guy #3: Where are you going?
Me: Dehi
What is wrong with these people?
Guy #1: Finds the reservation, okay have a seat wait for the bus. There are about 10-15 other people also in this little lounge.
2:30-bus comes, 25 min ride to the domestic terminal. I sit down next to another foreigner and start talking to her. Ask her where she's going, Hydrabad to do a mission. Quite typical actually, a lot of mission groups travel to places like that. She asks about my trip, wow, she thinks that four months on my own so brave, blah blah. Then she asks about my favorite place, whether I've brought electronics with me and whether I've found my faith on this trip. Oh boy. Then she starts spouting on about Jesus being her savior and how she just knows that her son who is into drugs is going to find Jesus for himself and on and on and on. I'm trying to be polite, but I've been traveling for like 10 hours at this point, it is the middle of the night and I'm really just not into being saved right now. Thankfully Air India is announced and I can hop off the bus.
3:00-enter domestic terminal, it is not obvious how to get to departures, go in a sketchy elevator with a weird Indian man.
3:30-Air India opens the check-in counter, go through security.
6:00-My flight is announced, hand over my boarding pass, get on a bus for another 25 minutes! Clearly, where your plane is has nothing to do with what gate they send you to. I'm looking around, does anyone else find this bus ride ridiculous. No, not really. Mostly on this flight were business people who looked like they were going to meetings in Delhi and stuff. Less of a bumrush situation all around.
8:30-flight lands, get my luggage, go outside to find Joanna, she's not there, not sure what to do. I have her number, but there aren't any phones, I don't have any rupees, etc. Finally find an exchange desk, get some money, ask a taxi stand guy if I can use his phone, I pay him 100 rupees, probably more than he's seen in a month, but I didn't care, I needed to find her. She finally comes, apparently Air India has sent her to the International terminal and basically she's been on a wild goose chase for an hour. Finally she finds me, all is well, and we head back to her place.

Phewsh, what a night.

The streets of Delhi are pretty much exactly what I imagined. We take autos (tuk-tuk for my south east asian traveler buddies) everywhere, so we are exposed to the air constantly. After just one day it was black when I blew my nose. There is the honking and general traffic patterns of Vietnam, mixed with the poverty of Cambodia, plus the just general insanity of Asian roads. Cars going the wrong way; trucks, busses, autos, cars, bikes, rikshaws all on the same streets; saw a guy pushing a cart of potato chips open topped on the highway yesterday. I mean, just complete and utter insanity. We've had a few auto drivers who are arguing with other people or just complete maniac drivers, but I'm told this is not the norm. Shantytowns with "houses"made of cardboard, children begging on teh street, garbage everywhere. But also, we went out to one of her Indian friends parents house. Oh my goodness, this might be the nicest house I've ever seen in my life. With probably half a football field as their yard, a pool, amazing rooms, really classy. Incridble place and then her dad sits down and starts chatting us up. It was so funny. It is really normal for Indian 20-somethings to live with their parents, I think until they get married. Which is not that different from a lot of countries actually. But to me, of course, it seems really foreign and strange that they are always talking about family obligations, parents being upset about a broken mirror on the car, etc.

The nice thing about visiting Joanna is that she's got lots of expat friends, most of whom are ethnically Indian and either grew up here and then lived abroad for a while and now are back, or actually grew up abroad and are now here, lots of different situations. But, many of them speak Hindi and of course, understand the culture. So, it has just been a wealth of information and help to meet all of them. Plus, they are great and it is so fun to have a group of friends to hang out with. Yesterday we hung out and watched three episodes of Californiacation, went to brunch, ordered dinner, went to the bookstore, etc. They've all been really welcoming to me and it is nice to see Joanna having such wonderful people to hang out with. I imagine they've all made it bearable for her to be here, because living in Delhi is no cake walk.

Last night we went to a Halloween party at another expat apartment. Yes, a week late, but a lot of people really got into the spirit. We didn't but it was fun to see others dressed up. One of the hosts worked really hard on making an auto out of cardboard to wear. Here's a photo of me and Joanna inside it. Was a fun night, but started to unravel when some creepy Indian guy that no one knew was walking around slapping women's butts and had to be escorted out of the party, but not before he peed all over the floor of the bathroom. Then some other really drunk guy decided to chuck and empty bottle off the fourth story balcony and could have killed someone, thankfully it just hit the ground. However, the security guys claimed a windsheild was broken, which it wasn't, I think they were trying to get money. I don't know, it went on for a while, finally we told Sam the host to just go back inside and forget about it. It wasn't really that insane of a party, but somehow weird things were going on.

Well, that's about all that's happened so far. I've had some incredible food and generally am basically living in the lap of luxury here. I find it funny that many apartments have marble floors throughout but long florescent bulbs like they have in schools. I think there are a lot of odd juxtapositions like that. I'm sure I'll find more as the weeks wear on.

Alright, that's it for now. Namascar.
Dina