If there was an American Gladiator show about traveling, New Delhi would be the gauntlet. Delhi was the first place where Jamie and I made some travel mistakes…trusted the wrong people and paid for it. It ended up being a minor slip and we escaped it with minimal damage. We were on our way to catch an overnight train to Jaisalmer from Delhi station. We got in a rickshaw and told the driver take us to the Delhi train station…easy enough right?! Wrong! Apparently there are two Delhi train stations, New Delhi and Old Delhi. When we arrived at the New Delhi station, with about 45 minutes to spare, we were approached by a man that we assumed was working for the train station. He asked us for our ticket and after a review he told us we were at the wrong station…we needed to be at Old Delhi station…and he was right. He told us that we did not have enough time to reach Old Delhi station and that we needed to go to the ticket office ad cancel our tickets and get a partial refund. Thoroughly disappointed and flustered we agreed and in what we thought was an act of kindness he put us in a rickshaw to the nearest ticket office and he even negotaited a lower fare on our behalf. So we sped off to the nearest ticket office which turned out to be about about 7 minutes away and on a weird street attached to a tailor shop. Alarms began going off in my head and my gut was telling me something didn’t smell right. We went ahead and inquired within, not knowing what else to do, and they said we could get a 50% refund on our existing tickets but we would have to book tickets on the next day train (okay sounds good). But then after some quick research they said that the train was full and that we needed to take the overnight bus and catch the train from a different city for $85/person (which was a grotesque inflation of prices for India). By now the stench of a scam was overpowering and I asked them why they were located in this building so far from the train station if they were indeed the ticket office. They told us that the office at the train station was under construction. After that I was like, “screw this” and we left to head back to the train station much to late to catch any train from any station that evening. We found the real international tourist booking office and we were able to get on the train the next day with no problem. You see in India, specifically Delhi, everything is a negiotation. It is a training ground to learn how to say “NO” and I believe I have become quite good at it. We always try to be friendly and personable in the event that the friendly stranger really has friendly intentions but after our polite “NO’s” are ignored, we deliver them with increasing bristling intensely. Jamie is hilarious sometimes to me, once the inquiry is deemed to have unfriendly intentions he quickly strong arm’s these people to the point that the only thing left on their face is shock. I guess it is kind of a good cop, bad cop routine.

But that is just India. There is no mistaking that this is a developing country and things are just done differently here. Once you accept and understand that, you tolerate it. We joke about how we hate India just a little bit everyday but that is also why we love it so much…because we had to travel this far to experience a culture this different from our own. We love the experiences that India provides.

Everytime we eat it is an experiment. With our limited experience and knowledge of other culture’s food, every meal is a learning curve. It is a guessing game on a menu with the only familiar thing being chicken. For many people it is as simple as Veg or Non-veg but for us it a vast unexplored wilderness where you sometimes get burned. You win some and lose some. Every decision is like Russian roulette for your taste buds and, later, your stomach. But through our exploration we have grown to love Indian food. And as far as the stomach is concerned…we haven’t had too many problems. Aside from a brief time every day my stomach gives me a hard kick and groans “What are you doing to me”!! I reply in my thought that it will only make us (me and my stomach) stronger and contemplate that I might live 5 years longer because of this experience. After this trip I think I could eat trash and not be any worse off for it. (Note: that not 5 hours later after originally writing this I was curled up sick as a mangy dog in intense pain and discomfort…but took some meds and felt better within 24 hours).

We have become thoroughly skilled at using ‘squat toilets’. Ditched our dependency on air conditioning (even though it is still a reward from time to time). We have adapted to eating about 2 meals a day and have become experts at selecting restaurants through the golden rule we developed with Koye: “Never eat at a restaurant or street vendor without any people”. We could unpack and repack our backpacks in about 4 minutes flat. Our backpacks are becoming very dirty and minor things are beginning to break and we are dreading the day when a major thing breaks on our “home”. We have stopped shaving and do not plan to do so until July. We have grown used to the extreme heat and humidity (even though we dream of mountains and snow). We ration our underwear like food stamps and have grown used to being quite dirty and taking 2-3 showers a day in combat. Not to mention I can’t remember the last time I took a cold shower, but it hasn’t mattered because I can’t remember the last time I was cold.

We have gone through the gauntlet……..

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