Day 1—New Delhi

I arrived in New Delhi (via New York and Zurich) at about midnight last night, and collected my luggage and got through customs with no major damage. After you pass through customs, you have to run through a gauntlet of about 500 people holding signs waiting for arriving passengers. It wasn't until I was nearly at the end of the line of people that I saw a man with a sign with the most beautiful words in the English language: MR. MIKE KALT, SWISS AIRLINES FLIGHT 173.

Safe in the knowledge that I wasn't going to have to spend the night in the New Delhi airport, I proceeded with him to a car for a relatively uneventful drive to the Le Meridien Hotel.

Got up this morning, and since my official tour was not scheduled until the afternoon, I decided to take a walk to the center of town, Connaught Circle. According to the map it was about 1/2 mile, but it took me over an hour to get there, even though I was offered a ride by every taxi and auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi. These guys are persistent enough to be carpet salesman.

Unfortunately, before I made it to Connaught Circle, I was victimized by the old "shit on the shoe" scam, where someone throws some fecal matter on your shoe, and a shoe shine wallah (person) just "happens" to notice it and offers to shine your shoes. I decided not to give the first guy the satisfaction/business (since he was probably in on the scheme), so I walked a few hundred yards until another shoeshine wallah pointed the condition of my shoe out to me again. I decided to take him up on his offer, since at least he wasn't in cahoots with the guy who threw the shit on my shoes. I asked him how much he wanted and he said "no problem, don't worry" so I told him to go ahead. When he finished, he said that it would be 800 rupees, or about $16.00. I told him that I would pay him 100 rupees ($2.00). Then another guy came up and he and the shoeshine guy started to play "good cop/bad cop". The other guy said that 800 rupees was too much, and he should only be charging me 600, which was what the Indian people paid for a shoeshine. Somehow, I can't imagine that the average Indian pays $12.00 for a shoeshine. Anyway, I gave him 200 rupees ($4.00) and told him to take it or leave it. Given that I had my shoes on, he didn't have much choice, since he didn't seem to have a wad of shit to throw on them.

By the time I got to Connaught Circle, I was so tired, hot, and sick of dodging cars, bicycles, and salesman that I decided to just go back to the hotel. Armed with my trusty compass, I confidently set out in the wrong direction. After about 20 minutes, I realized that I didn't recognize any of the buildings on what was (I thought) the same route I had taken from the hotel, so I decided to give up and get an auto-rickshaw to take me back to the hotel. Of course, all of the drivers that had been clamoring for my business minutes before suddenly disappeared. After walking another block, I finally spotted one and gave him my best helpless Western Tourist look.

Eventually, I made it back to my hotel, and collapsed in preparation for afternoon touring. The afternoon tour started with New Delhi. (In the early to mid-1900s, the British built a completely new capital city next to Delhi and called it New Delhi.) The government part of New Delhi is very pleasant with wide boulevards and relatively well-maintained buildings. After that, we attempted to see "old" Delhi, but wound up spending the afternoon mostly sitting in the worst traffic jams I have ever seen.

However, we miraculously escaped the traffic without ever seeing much of old Delhi, and managed to find a place that sells rugs and souvenirs. The carpet salesman are easily the equals of the ones in Turkey, but I managed to get out of there without buying a rug. According to the salesman I had undoubtedly left some poor Kashmiri family to starve, and had also insulted my family because I did not bring them back a quality carpet.

So, I have been here less than 24 hours and I have had about a weeks worth of experiences. This is the most crowded, filthy, place I have been, including Detroit. This is definitely not going to be a relaxing vaction, but it promises to be interesting.