I arrived in Delhi on schedule (surprisingly), my flight service was the worst I have ever had. I was on the plane for 14 hours and they served water/juice twice. I kept calling the lady for more water, until she finally had enough and told me that I should get my own water from the self-serve counter by the bathroom. They served food once, and kept the window blinds down for the whole flight so that all the passengers could get a "good night's rest", that way they wouldn't be too jet-lagged the next day. I didn't even get to see out of my window once. On my last flight over to Delhi, I ended up sitting next to some young Sikh who lived in Delhi. I couldn't understand him very well, but he seemed pretty excited about sitting next to a young western girl. He started trying to convince me that Guru Nanak was Krsna in Kali Yuga when our dinner came, so he said "first we eat dinner, then we talk". Needless to say, I pretened to fall asleep very quickly after that, and then made sure I didn't really sleep the rest of the flight. So after we all had a "good night's rest" we arrived in Delhi at 10:00 p.m. at night. Pretty stupid. But I made it on time and that's what counts.
Hmm, the smell of India. I have been told about that so many times, and I was really excited about it. What does India smell like? Well, I get off the plane and there was definately a noticeable smell, but not quite what I had envisioned. This smell was more like the burning of tar, rubber, plastic, exhaust; the smoky haze sitting there for months without any breeze to shift it around. Pretty intense.. I went and got my luggage with no problems and met with Yamuna, Dina, Yammy, Lila, KC, right away. Then we went out and were very nicely received by some devotees from the delhi temple, with garlands and everything. A little embarrasing but that was just the start of it all.
We got into our waiting taxi, after very "firmly" turning down all the polite offers of help with the luggage from all the Indians there, actually Dina is very good at that. I just pretend like I don't know what they are saying, or doing, or that they are even there. Just when we were about to leave our driver got into a fight with another driver. I have no idea what it was all about, but the other driver kept slamming the door, and yelling, not letting our driver get into the car. Then the devotee lady that was with us got out and started yelling at the drivers. Just when it seemed to be getting really serious, they all stopped, got in the cars and drove away, "no problem".
The city was so smogy! The air around the lamps was greenish reddish, and you couldn't really see more then a couple hundred feet ahead. My nose instantly plugged up. But the driver didn't seem to care, and started speeding along the road. It was 11:30 at night and the streets were packed with cares, all honking, no blinkers, no stopping. Of course none of our seat belts worked. We asked our driver why no one seemed to stop at the red lights, and his reply " no rules at night", I am not sure what rules he was talking about. They don't follow rules during the day either. Yamuna asked our driver how many accidents he has been in, very modestly he held up 3 fingers, only 3. I felt sick the whole time, but sooo excited!!!! I couldn't keep my eyes off the side of the road, trying to look everywhere at once! I was finally in India!! It really felt like a hazy dream.
We got to the temple a little after midnight, feeling a little sick, very tired. But they had some prasadam for us, so I had to eat a little. Really good prasadam too: creamy spinach/veggie soup, cauliflower, pepper, pea subji; chapatis, dhal, carrot halavah with almonds, cashews, raisins, and lots of butter. pretty heavy midnight snack. So then we finally went to bed. A little hard falling asleep. My pillow felt like a concrete block, and my bed was not much softer. For some reason I thought I didn't have any blankets and sheets because they were in the cupboard and I didn't look for them, So I slept under my towel. Ended up waking up much earlier then I should have, still so tired, but totally excited. I was ready to handle anything! hehehee.. a great start to a great adventure!
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