Monday, 16 February 2015

Day 0: Flight to Delhi

It’s June 2014. The flight to Delhi was long. It had a stopover at Mumbai. Total flying time may be around 4 hrs. But together with the check in it was a long journey. I left home at 9 am and by the time I reached Delhi it was 4 pm.

As planned, Bru was there at the airport. Though there was some initial confusion with respect to arrival terminal we managed to find each other. The only problem was the heat. The temperature was around 40 deg C, dry heat. Though you don’t sweat like in the south, you will feel like you are walking in an oven!

The little time I spend in Delhi, I did not enjoy it.  The crowd, the dust and the people -  not my idea of holiday conditions. We decided to go to the railway station to check for the train timings. Our booking said the train is from New Delhi (DLI). But when we reached there they said it is from old Delhi! I think it just the beginning of what is to come. We took a taxi to old Delhi. Since Bru is a white guy he immediately became the magnet for people selling things and beggars. Also the prices for everything we asked shot up in split second. Taxis, shops etc charged more than double. And that made my bargaining attempts tighter. As the money without bargaining was not much in foreign currency, Bru was not much concerned. But for my Indian salary, it was not a comfortable number. So I had to do the donkey work of bargaining with these greedy vultures all the time. Na! I didn’t enjoy that either!

We reached old Delhi railway station at around 5.30 pm. Our train is only at 8 pm. So we thought to have some food and Bru suggested McDonalds! Not our favourite, but somewhere clean and air conditioned. We got into the train in time. It was very very crowded and noisy. I couldn’t find our name in the reservation chart. I had booked the tickets online – first time I did that in ages. I decided to wait for the ticket controller and check it. The train was full and we waited in the corridor with all our big backpacks. The train started moving. I went to the next compartment and checked with the controller regarding our reservation. The all the trouble started. He said the number on the ticket is just waiting list numbers. Though they have charged for the ticket, it will be refunded to my account as the ticket is not yet confirmed. Or in other words we are completely screwed! I asked the controller if he can help us in some way, by paying fine or by extra charges for atleast a seat instead of a bed.  But he was very rude. He said we are not supposed to board the train without confirmation and we should leave the train in the next stop! Even after repeated asking he was not ready to help.

We got down at the next station. Some small unknown station in the outskirts of Delhi. Then Bru started vomiting. It seems the food from McDonalds didn’t do good to his stomach. I started getting worried. As per plan we have to somehow get to Dharamsala next day. I walked to the ticket counter to check with the station master for options. Since it is a small local station we can only get general class tickets for trains. Also our next train is atleast 3hrs away. Nothing looked good.

Then someone suggested going to the Metro station nearby and catching a metro to the Kashmiri gate which is 3 stops away. From there we could catch interstate buses. We went there and purchased a ticket for a bus though a ‘backdoor’ ticket agent in a non A/C bus. The tickets for A/C buses were not all available and our only option was to take a bus to Jalandhar in Punjab and from there take a bus to Pathankhot, and then one more bus to Dharamsala. I think its one of the worst bus routes we could take and at this last moment that was the only option available. Nothing sounded good.

The bus driver said the bus will leave in ½ hr. It was already 9.30 pm. In India if one says ½ hr it has a completely different meaning. By the time the bus left the station it was 1 am!!! These people are born cheats. They simply say ½ hr to get customers and wait till the bus is full.

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