A jet-lagged ramble
I’m staring at my calendar trying to deduce if this qualifies as our first day or not. You could arguably quantify it as a half-day, but it’s also kind of two days meshed into one? Time becomes meaningless when you’re suspended 30,000 feet in the air for 14 hours on an overnight flight from New York (I am not a fan of New York City, sorry!) to New Delhi. To make matters even worse, our red-eye was capped with a 10.5hr time change, which means we departed from JFK at 8:30p.m. on Sunday night and landed in DEL at 9:30p.m. on Monday night. Hence my confusion for what day of the trip this is.
Embarking on the journey from the suburbs of Philadelphia to the chaotic center of New York is always its own form of strife, too. A car, to a train, to another train, to an airport railway system, to the airport security, to our terminal? The whole of Sunday. Our flight? The whole of Sunday night in EST terms, the whole of Monday in IST terms.
So now that I have laid out all of the gory details, I’m sure you can understand why I don’t have much to report on Asia at this time. I’m not looking at it with fresh eyes, I’m looking at it with red eyes and what feels like half of my typical critical thinking skills. I reminded Mitch about the importance of avoiding the tap water in India and promptly turned on the sink and stuck my toothbrush under the running water while he stared at me with equal parts shock and concern. Then he very politely stopped me from putting said toothbrush covered with tap water into my mouth, which subsequently stopped me from breaking a record for quickest turn to illness for a new traveler (we had literally just arrived).
I will say the half-hour commute from the airport to our hostel awakened something in me though. After experiencing the incredible, eye-opening, exciting and overwhelming chaos of Morocco, I thought I was ready for anything… Well, the chaos of India puts the chaos of Morocco to shame. We eagerly leapt out of those plane seats, feeling a stiffness near to mummification after so many hours locked in one spot, and were immediately thrust into a Mario Kart simulation as our driver sped down highways and dirt roads, slamming into potholes and riding the middle lane as hundreds of cars and mopeds and tuk tuks did the same, honking at each other all the while. The sound of horns honking was constant, never ceasing for more than a few seconds at a time. It was commotion everywhere we looked. We drove by men on a wooden plank balanced atop a tractor–you could say it most closely resembled a front bench seat, but it also didn’t really resemble anything at all. We passed couples texting while also operating mopeds. We followed dekotora trucks with streamers, intricate hand-painted designs, and the words “BLOW HORN” painted on the back in bold letters. We dodged all of the various types of vehicles and all of the passerby, swerving from lane to lane and attracting the stares of every single person as we did so. You may be wondering, were these stares because of our driver’s erratic methods of transportation? Not at all: in fact, he was part of the norm. We were not.
Men were whipping around to get a second look at us, peering against the glass in their vehicles, keeping their heads on a swivel atop their bikes to prolong the eye contact. I’d heard of this rumor in the past but was hesitant to believe it (I try to go into everything open-minded, with little expectations or assumptions)… that is, until five seconds after we left the airport. Believe it. It’s real. It was also brief, a glimpse into what being a white traveler in India feels like. A lot more happened in the following couple days, which I am eager to share.
As for that drive… I have never in my life been quite so overwhelmingly pummeled by so many chaotic sensations at once, especially not after such a long period of quiet near-isolation like we had on the plane. The honking, the erratic driving, the stares…. Throw in a jarring time change and jet lag and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a case of shared delusion. We were looking around in complete bewilderment, not quite grasping where we were now and what was in store for us.
So that was our first day… or half-day, or two days. A travel day through and through, one that packed a real punch at the end. But the beacon of light at the end of this travel tunnel is that we were so bone-tired when we arrived at our hostel that after having semi-conversation, semi-delusional joking and rambling (and a close brush with the tap water), we promptly passed out for nearly eleven hours. Asia diaries, day one, complete. Picture us snoring, then fade to black. End of scene.