Catching Up with India Part I: Arrival

First, I apologize for not updating this blog sooner. Believe me I have been dying to do so since we arrived here, but technical difficulties--in the land of tech support nonetheless--have kept me from doing so. I'll explain as I attempt to sift through the mountains of thoughts, impressions, misconceptions, corrected misimpressions, and experiences that have been piling up in my head for the past week.

Part I: En route to India

Most of our flight here was provided by AirFrance, an airline I found to be quite impressive, as compared to its Delta counterpart. First we (and when I say "we" I am referring to my traveling partner, fellow intern, roommate, and friend, the wonderful and insightful Yvette Gonzalez) flew Delta from Salt Lake to Atlanta, Georgia, and despite an airport representative's promise to me back in March that our connecting gate would be in the same terminal that we landed, we had to run from our plane, which landed just as our other flight was boarding, down the terminal, downstairs, on the the train, wait for the last stop, hop off, run upstairs and down the terminal to our plane, which took us into its belly minutes before take off.

Eight groggy hours later we landed in a Paris morning, where we were ferried onto a bus and drove aimlessly in circles around the Paris airport, which is a city in and of itself, for a bit before being deposited at the international/customs terminal. Once here we were ushered, by various distracted and hurried french accents to the terminal where we would board for Delhi, "upstairs and to the left". After being "upstairs and to the left" (aka the customs line, not the place to board for Delhi) for 30-45 minutes the customs agent apologetically informed us that we did need to be here, but rather downstairs, through a maze of narrow, zig-zaging corridors to the bus station-like area where we would catch a bus that would lake us to our terminal. The only good thing about the bus-station like area was the brief wifi connection and the American-seeming employee who commented on frying eggs on the pavement in Arizona. The bus eventually came and we drove in aimless, winding circles again and were dropped off at our terminal. Our two hour layover had been reduces to 15 minutes at this point, enough time to grab a 7 dollar-8 ounce-not-very-good-coffee from an unfriendly barista.

This was my first visit to France.

We finally tumbled out of the plane into a country called in India, a city called Delhi, in the modern, spacious, simple, beautiful, accommodating Indira Gandhi airport. Arriving in the sleek, modern looking building brought two thoughts to mind:
1) And people are calling India crazy, chaotic and discombobulated? The international section of the Indira Gandhi airport kicked Charles De Gaulle's ass in first impression and ease.
2) There is a reason for this. I assume that reason to be that the Indian government is looking to impress incoming foreigners more than that the French, who well know that their country is a sought enough destination that people will come no matter how shitty their incoming international terminal is.

We breezed through customs which had around 10 agents verses Paris' 3. Then we soon found two men, Ajey and Sandeep--Maitri staff members--holding a sign that read "Maitri/Melissa Moeinvaziri/Yvette Gonzalez".

Our first introduction to India was the drive to our apartment. We stepped out into the night air that I had seen from the airplane: a surreal sort of scene, a city draped in a thick fog, or smoke as the smell would suggest. Orbs of yellow light, like foxfire in a marsh, were the only landmarks of the city we could see from the air and on the darting ride home. The drive touched on that stereotypical notion of chaos that is so often applied to India; yet chaos is an inappropriate term because chaos does not flow as smoothly as the traffic in India does. A few of my my first impression were:

1) Honking is optional and arbitrary, you can do it whenever (I soon found this to not be that case at all, honking, as we discovered when we had to make our own way, on foot through Delhi traffic, is a way of letting all the other street inhabitants know that you are there, and quickly one becomes offended if a car that is passing inches from you does not honk to let you know that they are doing so).

2) Lines on the road are also optional and arbitrary, you do not need to pay them any heed (this has held true throughout the week, and I don't assume it will change or be explained).

In this unruly-seeming rush of the road there exists a sort of calm brought on by tent-like shacks on the side of the road--some one's home--small shrines glowing amongst the street debris--some one's faith--food carts and bike rickshaws being pushed and peddled at midnight on the highway--some one's livelihood.

Home: a two bedroom, two bath apartment with amenities such as a water filter in the kitchen sink, a washer, cloths-line to dry cloths, sketchy internet and electricity. Its quaint, but not a European, or cottage style or of way, in its own, as-yet-to-be-described sort of way. Appliances are temperamental and put up a constant struggles against being used (like the internet and electricity). Lizards, dust, heat, milk that comes in bags are our homey comforts.

Time to go out. I promise that by the end of the day I will catch up on my entire week here!
Namaste!