Aidan's Asian Blog

Aidan's Asian Blog
12th March 06 Delhi

What a morning! Talk about stressful. Let me start at the beginning, 9:00am to be precise. Actually the beginning was yesterday, similar time, same location. My friends arrived from England yesterday so I arranged to meet them at their hotel, which according to my “map” was quite a way from my guesthouse. So I had a bite to eat (used up the last of Vegemite jar No. 1) and jumped in an auto-rickshaw (much to my shame, but there didn’t seem to be an easier way to get there), the driver said that I could pay him what I wanted at the end. No way, arrange fare first. So, I told him that I’d give him 50 Rupee, and he said not enough! We eventually agreed on 70 Rupee and I was surprised that it took is a full half an hour to get there. I’d arranged to meet my friends at 10:00 and I got there a couple of minutes late.

I asked for him at reception only to be told that he wasn’t staying in the hotel. I checked that I had the right hotel and was told that I had, I asked if they had made a reservation and was told that they had, but they were going to be a day late! At least I’d found the right hotel, shame my friends weren’t in it though! I hailed a auto-rickshaw down and decided to collect my motorbike which was finally going to be ready that morning (I hoped), the ba$tard behind the wheel tried to charge me 250 Rupees for a journey I’d done five minutes earlier for 70 Rupees, I started to walk off and he called me back and said 100 Rupees, I couldn’t be arsed haggling over £0.40p so I jumped in.

I got to Karol Bagh and they were just putting the luggage rack onto to my bike, so I hung around for half an hour and then rode into the sunset. Well, sunset isn’t exactly true, especially as it was about 11:30 at the time, and I don’t think the sun would be able to penetrate the permanent smog / pollution hanging over Delhi. I decided to head to India Gate and sit down with a newspaper for an hour on the grass in relative peace. Right! I think I must have had about thirty seconds by myself before I was approached. An elderly gentleman and a very young girl (his grand daughter) started yapping to me, no problem, as they weren’t trying to sell me anything. Turns out that he was taught by the Irish Christian Brothers in Delhi (I thought it was only the Irish who had to suffer!), and he started singing me some Irish songs that I’ve never heard before. Quite surreal.

When he left I was surrounded by about seven kids who started asking me for money, they sat down and they all had their hands out saying “10 Rupees, 10 Rupees”. Then one of them starts opening the zip on my rucksack, so I told them to go and annoy someone else, not that they understood. They eventually wandered off, and I noticed that they didn’t try to ask anyone else for money (I was the only Westerner there). Next I had two teenage girls come a begging, they were well dressed and appeared to be “normal” teenage girls, didn’t stop them trying to get some rupees off me though. Next I had some guy selling crisps, he was quickly followed by some guy selling drinks. Then I had some guy selling some contraption on an elastic band that you shoot up into the air and it “helicopters” down – Do I really look twelve years old? I decided to hit the road, as I wasn’t going to get any peace.

I had to sort out the problem of where to park my motorbike at night. I couldn’t leave it at the place I was staying at as it was down a narrow alleyway and they didn’t have a car park. I found a guesthouse around the corner, which had a bit of space outside their entrance; the good thing about this place was that the receptionist over looked it. I went in and had a look at the room, it was a bit grotty and had a “bucket shower”, i.e. I had to fill a bucket of cold water up and pour it over myself, but it had a TV and Liverpool were playing Arsenal later that evening so I decided to take it. I got chatting to one of the guys in the hotel and he rode an Enfield Bullet as well, and he was asking me lots of questions about the bike, he even offered to buy it in six months time. I got a good feeling about him and I reckon the bike should be save enough there (famous last words).

Which brings me back to the start of the story. I decided to go and see my friends this morning at 10:00, so I had some breakfast (Omelette) and left for their hotel at 09:30, which should have been enough time as I was on my motorbike. I rode down to Connaught Place and found the road that I needed and I sailed past India Gate, so far so good. I rode over the fly-over that I’d walked to a couple of days ago, so I knew that I was on the right track. The traffic was fairly heavy and it was stop start all the way, there wasn’t much space to squeeze through, even though I was on the bike as every other vehicle acted like it was a motorbike and when I say every other vehicle I mean every other vehicle. I’ve never seen driving as bad as what I witnessed this morning, trucks hurtling into the smallest spaces, jumping from lane to lane, forget about indicators (must be optional extras). I came to a train station pulled in to check my position on the map (and to steady my nerves), I was still on course and everything was going according to plan.

That’s where the “according to plan” bit ended though. I had to make a right turn along the ring road and my map told me I had to take the second turn on the left once I was on that road. I think I took the correct turn onto the ring road, as I ground to a halt due to the volume of traffic I hit, and I figure most ring roads are chocker during rush hour. Because the engine and gearbox have just been rebuilt I’ve got to go easy on the bike for the first 500 km and the gearbox hasn’t “settled” yet, which means that it’s difficult finding Neutral gear at times, which is bad news when I’m riding mainly in 1st and 2nd gear and am often at a standstill for three or four minutes at a time. If I don’t find Neutral it means I’m stuck in either 1st or 2nd gear during this time and I’ve got to hold the clutch in, and because the engine isn’t run in it cut out on me numerous times if I couldn’t find Neutral. This was fun as I must have had every car in Delhi (and the surround areas) behind me all beeping at me to go. The bike started first kick most times, but if it didn’t I’d be deafened by the beeping behind me. I felt like getting off and smacking the head off the lot of them! Stress levels were rising.

It was about 10:30 at this stage and I’d somehow managed to get to Nehru Place, which was really close to my friends hotel. I couldn’t find the names of any of the local roads, but I rode around hoping to come across the road they were on. I eventually gave up on this idea as I was literally going around in circles. I then decided to ask one of the “scum” (auto-rickshaw drivers) to lead me to their hotel, as I was desperate at this stage. I managed to flag one down and showed him where I wanted to go on the map. He indicated that I jumped in; I told him that if he can go there I’d follow him on my bike. He refused! I told him that I’d pay him up front, I even offered him 50 Rupees, which was way over the odds as we were so close, but he drove off! I tried this three more times and none of the ba$tards would lead me to my friend’s hotel! I rode around in the slow moving traffic jam for another hour, but eventually gave up. Then I had the fun of trying to get back to my hotel, to cut a long story short, I eventually got back there, it was 13:00! Three and a half hours after I’d left and 35 km’s later! I parked my bike outside my guesthouse and decided to try and find a phone number for my friend’s hotel, easier said that done.

I found their hotel on-line fairly easy, but it took me about ten minutes to locate a phone number for it. Fax number no problem, but I was a struggle to find a phone number. When I eventually found it I asked the guy in the Internet shop if I could use the phone to call local. He told me that I could only call international via the Internet and not locally! I could have screamed… One of the other staff members in there asked me where I was calling and I explained the situation to him. Turns out he studied in London for three years and worked in Hounslow, he let me use his mobile phone to call my friends. I got through to the switchboard and gave them one of my friend’s names and I was put though, so at least they made it! I couldn’t face going to their hotel again, so I’ve arranged for them to meet me in Maccy D’s in Connaught Place – easy place to meet as long as we don’t eat! I arranged to meet them between 14:15 and 15:00; it’s 15:06 now, so hopefully they’ll be able to find it! It’s now 15:25 and still no sign of them! Will this day ever end? Oh well at least there’s air conditioning in here, I wonder how long they’ll let me spend drinking my coke? I’ve done well to stretch it out to nearly an hour!

What else can I tell you? I read in the newspaper today they the police in Pakistan are arresting kite flyers as they have caused twelve deaths in the last two weeks! For some reason (which they didn’t explain) they use glass fibre strings on their kites and when the kite falls from the sky (for some reason they fly the kites near roads) they decapitate motorcyclists going by! There is uproar about this. No, not the decapitations, the fact that they are not allowed to fly the kites! Scores of people defying the ban are getting arrested and thrown in jail. We live in a mad world.

Where are they? What else has been happening? The Holi festival starts on 15th March; this is where everyone one goes around throwing colour powder over each other. There are notices from the Police in the newspapers not to drink drive, have three people on a motorcycle, not to throw powder or water balloons (filled with coloured water) at motorcyclists. There are also adverts for 3.5 litre high-powered water pistols! Should be fun. Memo to self: Keep off motorcycle and protect camera! In some parts of the country the women folk are allowed to hit their men with sticks on the way to the celebrations, unfortunately the men are allowed to wear padding to less the impact of the blows. Teenagers are allowed to elope at this time as well and dozens of couples go missing from their villages during Holi.

And so I waited. I gave up at 16:00 and decided to call my friends mobile to see where they were. Because he has an English mobile, I couldn’t dial from the street phones and the nearest Internet phone that I knew of was over quarter of an hours walk away, so I decided to by an Indian sim card for my mobile. When I bought a sim card in Vietnam it was a two minute process, pay money, insert sim card are bobs your uncle. Not so India. I had to fill in a form and give them a passport photo (my last one), they also copied my passport and Indian visa and wanted to know the address of the hotel I was staying in. They then had to go and input all the information into a computer; the whole process took over an hour.

I finally got to call my friend just after 17:00, he had been waiting in Maccy D’s and had been wondering where the hell I was. Unknown to me there are three Mc Donalds in Connaught Place (good knows where because I’ve only ever seen one) and he’d been waiting in one of the other ones for an hour, he was then told there were two others so he spent half an hour in the second one and got to the third one just after 16:00, we must of missed each other by minutes! By the time I rang him he was off shopping with his missus, so we didn’t actually get to meet up until nearly 19:00! We grabbed a quick drink and we then went off to a restaurant that I know and had a nice dinner there. It was really nice to see some familiar faces and catch up on a bit of news from London.

Oh yeah, I finally got my hands on my new camera! When I got back to my guesthouse, I had a quick play around with it and had a brief read of the instruction manual. I couldn’t actually use the camera though as I had to charge the battery up, so I plugged the charger in and let it charge overnight. I woke up at 05:15 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, but the battery had charged by this stage so I fired up the camera and set the time, date etc, but still couldn’t use the camera as I don’t have a lens for it! So I’m sitting here in a camera shop waiting for a lens to be delivered and praying that it’ll work in my camera