India, Day 3

Hello, this is Sam in Mussoorie, my home base for the next couple months in India. I arrived this morning after an excrutiatingly long bus ride overnight from Delhi. I enjoyed the capital city much more than I thought I would; I had terrible memories of a hot, sticky, dirty, incredibly loud place where masses of beggars acosted you at every corner. My actual experience turned out to be significantly better than this preconception led me to expect, partly because I am older, more experienced, and better able to cope with with trying situations, but also because Delhi itself has been an enormous beneficiary of India's surging economy in the past years.

In Delhi, I stayed in the heart of the most oppressive area of the city, the Paharganj area, a densely populated neighborhood whose streets are lined with shops catering to tourists, and which houses nearly all of Delhi's backpacker community. Tourists are everywhere among the masses, and all of the locals, hawking one product or another, seem to view a white person as a walking bank account. There are loads of cool people to talk to--not only fellow foreigners, but also Indians, if you can figure out that they are not trying to sell you something, (wich is rare, I must admit). It is a hassle, but if you don't let it get to you, everything is good.

Much more genuine for me was Old Delhi, where the crowded masses moving in the streets contain only the occasional white face, and where businesses cater to the common person's needs. My favorite areas were the district in which all the street food stalls, selling curries and lassis and chai, were clumped together, and the area where all of the fabric dealers congregated--a veritable rainbow of color.

Delhi was a very tiring experience, and I ended up exhausted or sleeping much of the time because of jetlag. But, as I inched my way along the streets of Old Delhi, surrounded by people on three sides and moving traffic on the fourth, I felt strangely happy. It is amazing how, in the midst of what would appear to be mayhem, everybody knows their place--what they are doing, where they are going. It really is fun to be a part of.

Now, I am out of Delhi, up in the mountains where it is much more quiet--almost eerily quiet after being in the constant horn blowing of Delhi. Tomorrow, Monday morning, I begin my language lessons, which should occupy a large chunk of my time for the next eight weeks or so.