Ladakh and my mates

 

My first day in India

It is the middle of July! It is the middle of such a lazy month that I feel like forgetting the heat outside and want to taste a new flavour of life. I don’t know weather 16 is my lucky number, but this is the day when my story started. It was before 4 AM when the airplane from Amman landed at Ghandi International Airport in New Delhi. The Steward, with her charming walk, passed through the cabin 3 times with disinfectant spray. I declared with all my honesty that I have nothing to do with Swine Flu, and focused my eyes on the airport staff, their faces were well covered with medical masks. At this point I finally got it! Tommy, this won’t be just a common journey!.

Let me just explain for those of you who will put so much effort into and finishing this blog about how this trip started. It was one cold winter evening, I had nothing really to do and there was no fun at all in my town. That night, the fortune teller was reading gypsy cards for me. My present life was described with a card titled ‘here and now’. I think this is a very cruel card for someone who expects more from life than just surviving. God knows that I have had nothing but luck in my life, so for my future I picked the best card ever. The Joker between tarot cards, The Fool. ‘Whaaat?! The Fool?!, That man must go mad!’ .At this stage however I must let you down, for I didn’t go mad. It is true that if you asked me why I decided on travelling to India I would have just given you a cheeky smile, wink in my flirty way, and add with a deep brown voice: ‘It is maybe coz I picked the fool’. Honesty I don’t know much about India and so this is the purpose of my journey. I feel like trying something new and exploring a new culture. I believe that to discover a new way of thinking is how I will educate myself. I love changes, I feel like I am truly, really alive. Let’s just think for a while who has a better life as a fool, the answer is I guess no one! To calm down those logical thinking readers before they light their next cigarette, I would just like to let you know that my staying here also has a deeper meaning. This however we will discuss maybe later, after we know each other a bit more. I can tell you; so far I really enjoy this version with the fool.

But let’s get back to India! It is early morning and I am at the airport. There isn’t any luggage screen so I just search for my fellow travellers from the plane. I remember their faces from Jordan because we were waiting there for ages. I grab my bag full of useless stuff I will never ever need in India and I rush to some long queue. Soon after, I am kindly allowed to join another queue for the airport transit. I am lucky as usual and get the last spot on the stairs in the shuttle bus. The bus is really crowded but it doesn’t spoil my first impression of India. To be honest I expected some people on the roof but maybe I’ll be luckier next time.

I finally reach the next building and I am immediately surrounded with guys carrying airport trolleys offering their help. Well I must excuse myself and refuse their services; however I think they are not going to stop until I reach departure area. All entrances to the terminal area are guarded with soldiers with machine guns in their hands. I am waiting at the entrance number 4 for a long time until eventually soldier says I have to go number 7. I’m just thinking OK you’ve got a gun so I’d rather follow your orders. He still keeps my air ticket in his hands and stares at it. This is one thing I have already spotted in Amman. I don’t know if these people are thinking hard, or if they just ignore you, but they don’t ever bother to pass things back to you. They don’t even make the tiniest gesture to let you know that you are allowed to take back whatever they are holding. I just grab back my piece of paper, so called these days an air ticket and I go to gate number 7. The queue here is much better, not busy at all. Suddenly, one guy with the hugest baking tray I have ever seen is trying to get out through the tiny entrance door. I move aside to make some room for this poor guy and at this moment all the Indians behind me jump the queue. Great, it seems this ancient culture is yet to develop a sense for queuing. How can this be, how are people ever happy in their lives without it? I would think about this for longer but I finally made it, I am in the terminal building! Gates number 4 and 7, same all others lead to this place. I don’t really get why I had to enter exactly through gate 4 anyway.

The airport itself was OK except for the offer of meals and souvenirs it looked very European. I’m tired and I have still one hour till departure. I’m marching around the terminal hall, trying not to fall asleep. I wake up immediately when I see our airplane, or I would rather say small propeller flying machine. It reminds me a plane from Disney’s cartoon about pilot Balu. I don’t like to think how many times he has crashed. Surprisingly the flight is really alright, it takes just 50 minutes and food is even served. The only problem is the food is delivered when we are either just taking off or landing so our trays are falling down all the time. Otherwise it is great fun!

I am getting off the plane in Chandigarh. This is the first time in my life I understand the real meaning of word smother. All my clothes stick to my body in a second. In front of me there is an old unattractive building so called an airport. There are just two halls inside, one for departures and one for arrivals. It reminds me of an old Cuban bus station from the movies. Inside the arrival zone there is one ancient belt for our luggage and no passport control. However during the changing of my hardly earned Euros into those their Rubbles they took a copy of my passport, Weird! I am outside and there is just one thing I was worrying about during the whole flight that when I arrive no one would wait to pick me up. Tarraaaa! Indeed! This is the case! I keep cool and I take a taxi to the address I have on my invitation letter for visa matters. It is the residence of one student organisation, which helped me to arrange my stay here.

The taxi approaches the residence and I cannot keep cool anymore as it is just an old abandoned building. All the doors are locked so I don’t think there is anyone inside. I am calling the guy who was supposed to pick me up but my cell phone doesn’t work. How lovely, this can happen just to such a lunatic as me. The cab driver doesn’t speak English at all. Poor old man rather stops some boy on the street who speaks English and then he can drive. I use his phone to call my pick up guy Sanyam and he explains to the driver the directions to his place. This city is divided into sectors that form square network. So I am delivered to the address. The driver asks for 400 Rupees (not even €6) but I generously give him 500. He doesn’t want to accept that. But no one says no to Tommy! So I am afraid he has to take it! I try to enter the house but it seems this is in fact the wrong sector. Not to worry as I receive a free ride to the correct address. I know that I overpaid twice or even three times but I am impressed with the respect they give to foreigners and their will to help. He really helped me a lot. He could have just stopped the car and left me in the middle of nowhere, which happens in many countries. I start feeling sympathy towards this nation.

The place I’m arriving at seems quite weird for me as a sign on the building says Child Clinique. I calm down as I see Sanyam walking out. He waits here for me with one polish beauty. We feel no sympathy for each other straight from the beginning. We have a huge argument but I m pretty sure I will discuss it later in the right moment. By the way I received information; it is that a child servant costs just €30 per month. I’m thinking to improve my lazy habits and get one for me as well. Later we are on the way to drop the polish beauty at her new place, it is accommodation for interns. As soon as I enter the room I have a vivid picture about my staying here. The place is really dirty, lots of dust and the entire bathroom was covered with mildew. There is just one double bed and no wardrobe. The door doesn’t have a proper lock and there is just a padlock thingy that doesn’t seem safe for me at all. At this stage I realise that I should get rid off that ugly habit to base everything on material things coz anyway sooner or later I will lose them.

Sanyam decided that we are going to the cinema see Harry Potter. So now we are on the way. I really didn’t get why the cinema. Firstly, I am really terribly tired, Secondly, I go to the cinema only when I am bored, now that I am in incredible India so many things to see, but he is the boss. We are getting on the road and I look outside and my eyes cannot sleep anymore. Many people would see here just poverty and dirt but only blind eyes cannot see this beauty coz they don’t receive the picture in the heart. I love the traffic here; the road is as a great river, wild and so unorganised that it works perfectly. Cars and fully packed busses are racing with a huge number of scooters, horse tracks, rickshaws and bicycles carrying everything possible from furniture to those huge baking trays. I would name it river of life. Aside people cook, eat, and have their businesses. Barbers cut and shave and a mother breast feeds her baby. All these activities are well known to me, but here in India they have focus purely on the purpose. Comfort is not an issue. For me it is incredibly beautiful and exciting. There is an orang-utan climbing down the block of flats, on the round bout are cows having a rest and graze. Everything is so fascinating for me I do not believe that Harry Potter’s Hogwarts can be more magical than this amazing place!

We are parking the car with all my belongings in the shopping mall car park. I’m reasonably worried to leave everything, from my kinky underwear to my lap top, but, Sanyam assures me that it is OK and now I understand why. Before entering the shopping mall we are completely searched by the security guard. It is a stricter security check before the cinema than it was before boarding my flight! They look into my bag and are seriously trying to throw away chocolate I brought from my country! No way matie! I’d rather you take good care of it and I’ll pick it up later. We enter cinema and I am really tired. I have to pull together all my effort to stand up for the playing of the national anthem. Then I just close my eyes and fall asleep. It isn’t comfortable at all and I’m always being woken up coz locals are laughing at me. I know I am snoring like a Yogi the bear but I don’t care. Every time I close my eyes I dream about my lovely home country, family and beloved ones. When I open eyes I am back in this totally different reality however man must sometimes overcome himself and fight! Before I get back to my beloved ones I must pass my way through a world full of eternal beauty and incredible adventures!