Middle East 08

My departure from Jordan was superb – I had a lovely taxi driver from Iraq with fantastic English, who spent the entire ride talking about opening a shwarma stand in California, and Tony Robbins.  He told us that he knows that the United States Government consults with THE Anthony Robbins before making any decision.  The guy was great.

The flight to Qatar was uneventful, as was the flight to Delhi, neither of which I slept on with those fancy little tv’s in front of me. I haven’t had television in 6 months.  I watched. and watched. and watched.

Arriving in Delhi at 3am was a trip. I don’t mean that in a positive way.  The Mexico City Airport has nothing on this place. We arrive, it’s dark, it’s raining, it’s 100 degrees with oppressive humidity. We get a rickshaw driver to take us to our hostel.  Now, we get in the rickshaw, it’s crazy.  I mean, traffic rules do not apply in this country. I’m holding on for dear life.  We get to the area of the main bazaar, where we are staying, and the streets are like 2 feet wide, and there are cows EVERYWHERE.  There are creepy people out, and it’s dark and dirty and I’m wondering why I came to India.

We arrive at our hotel to find that they have no record of our reservation. shocking.  We go next door, get a room, and try to sleep for a few hours. When we woke up, we walked out to the train station to see where we could get a ticket to the next day, of course, you can’t book there.  The Lonely Planet says there is one travel agent in all of Delhi that you are to book through. So, we go.

Arun, our salesman, really got us. The trains to where we wanted to go were booked for the next 4 days (of course), so we got talked into hiring a car.  We spent the rest of the day visiting the Prime Minister’s house, India Gate, a Sikh temple, and grabbed a ridiculously delicious dinner on the street of the bazaar for $2.

We got picked up the next day to leave for Jhunjhuno, which would have been a 4 hour drive but ended up taking 6 because of flooding on the streets.  Now, the streets in India, aside from the fact that they drive on the other side, are crazy.  What we call a one lane dirt road is a 3 lane highway here.  And don’t forget the cows, camels, trucks, rickshaws, and bicycles also on these streets.  Drivers here use their horns to signal: i’m about to pass you, you’re in my way, you’re driving to slow, move out of the way cow, slow down camel, i’m about to exhale, i’m inhaling.. everything. a 30 minute segment is more like a painful opera of awful horns.  So anyway, Jhunjuno was okay.. we did some sightseeing, slept in a cute little garden hostel where the power went out just as it did the night before in Delhi. 

I’m writing now from Bikaner.  Today I toured a fort and a palace… and guess what? We lost power again tonight. Luckily, it’s back for me to add this little update. I can’t remember the name of the place i’m going to tomorrow, but after that it’s Mt. Abu for a few days, then Jaipur. I’m planning on being in Agra to see the Taj Mahal on the 21, and after that, hightailing it up north toward Rishikesh for more of a backpacker clientele.  Will update soon!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.