And here we are in India. I still don’t feel anything yet. I’m like a sealed bottle into which nothing from the outside can get in. Probably it’s my brain’s defense reaction, not to pay attention to what’s happening. Because this is all far beyond the familiar, so far that it doesn’t take long to go crazy from the unfamiliarity. But as we know, you get used to everything, which means I’ll soon lose my vigilance and start enjoying myself. I so hope so :)
(For the record) This time we flew low-cost with Air Arabia, with a layover in the shabby little airport of Sharjah. Overall it wasn’t bad. The planes are small, Airbus 320s. Of course, there’s no talk of personal TVs with movies, blankets, or any other service. They don’t feed you here and they don’t even give out free water. But we stocked up on food for the trip thanks to our moms (a big thank-you to them!), and bought water at duty free.
We landed in Delhi at 2 a.m. local time. We decided to get to Main Bazaar by metro, which goes almost there. But the first metro train starts at 4:45, so we found some free seats at the airport and sat waiting… We got free internet, ate a little of our food supplies. Time passed quite quickly. We found the metro without any problems, since we’d already been here before; memory is such a tricky thing — it pulls the needed information from somewhere deep inside when you need it.
The metro’s final station is New Delhi railway station.
We had business here: we wanted to buy train tickets for tomorrow. Actually, I bought all the train tickets in Kyiv in advance, online. But I forgot about this one, and buying train tickets online isn’t very easy; there’s a ticket limit, and we had already used it up.
In short, we desperately needed tickets! I had read that there is a special bureau for foreigners here, like an upgraded ticket office where only tourists can buy tickets. As soon as we entered the station building and tried to go anywhere, station employees ran up to us and said the bureau was closed and had moved to another place. I was mentally prepared for this because I’d read about this tourist scam — that even staff in uniforms with badges try to confuse you and send you somewhere unclear. So we didn’t give up.
We had to cross the tracks to another station building, on the other side of the tracks. As soon as we got there, we saw a huge red sign pointing to the foreigners’ ticket office, and рядом hung a smaller sign that said something like “do not trust anyone who tells you the foreigners’ ticket office is closed or has moved…” In general, everything was clear — India had begun.
We successfully found the ticket office; it was a separate room with soft sofas and almost no people. We waited a bit for the Indian ticket seller to come to his senses, filled out some form, paid a pile of money ($30 for two tickets to Ajmer), and there we were with tickets. Правда not for tomorrow as planned, but for the day after tomorrow… Tomorrow’s tickets were all sold out, alas. Well, so be it. It’s just a pity that one night in the hotel we had already paid for in advance is going to be wasted because of this.
By the way, while we were wandering around the station, some guys, apparently from Russia judging by their speech, approached us asking for help. They said they also wanted to buy tickets for today, but didn’t know English and couldn’t understand anything. To be honest, buying tickets on the spot in India is difficult — you probably have to be Indian to understand what’s what there. There are a million different ticket windows, and it’s not clear where to stand, and they send you from one window to another, and on top of that you can’t trust anyone! We helped them fill out the form, and they went on to stand in line in hopes of actually buying a ticket. Later, we crossed paths with these guys again by chance at the hotel; they told us how they’d been cheated out of $10, taken by taxi to some fake ticket office…
After the ticket office, we had to keep going. It was around 6 a.m. It was freezing outside, 9 degrees, and pitch dark. Each of us had two backpacks (one of which we planned to leave in storage), but we still had to get there. First, to the booked hotel!
We had booked a nice hotel, but when we got there, they told us we either had to wait until 1 p.m., or if we wanted to check in now, pay an extra $10. Besides, the amount we had expected turned out not to be quite right, because the price was listed without taxes, so the hotel seemed expensive for India and we left to look for better luck.
First we decided to go leave our backpacks. Done. Then we went looking for a hotel. We checked a couple, but the rooms there were so awful, and without windows too, that the thought of spending two nights there was deeply depressing. In the end we reached the hotel tucked deep in the tiniest little streets where we had stayed one night on our previous visit. Most rooms here were also without windows, but they found us one with a big window… And of course we gave in :)
We were very, very sleepy. Even more than hungry, so we washed up and fell asleep. I sank into such a deep sleep that I even stopped hearing the pigeons rustling above our ears. And I didn’t hear the alarm at all, which, according to Volchy, rang for two hours… Volchy somehow got up and started shaking me. I could hear him through some kind of haze, but I couldn’t open my eyes. Volchy forcibly sat me up, gave me water, and I think I was coming back to life, if you can call it that. This only happens to me after flights…
