Written by Michael - 03.19.11
We arrived in New Delhi, India 1 week ago, braced for an inevitable assault on our senses. India, if you didn’t know, is a land of extreme contrasts: old and new, wealth and poverty, magnificence and squalor. Here’s the story of our entry.
I took my first India task very seriously: to orchestrate as easy a transition into this predictably unpredictable land as possible so that AJK would be more turned on to India than turned off. Last I was here was 21 years ago when I coined the phrase “India takes you by the throat” – and I saw my job as minimizing this phenomena for us all. I think first impressions are particularly important with the kids – so the strategy was to create a soft landing by pre-booking transportation from the airport to safe and clean accommodations in an area that wasn’t teeming with people, filth, beggars and tourist touts. Sounds straight forward, right? FALSE!!!
- First challenge: Where in Delhi won’t be too intense yet not too inconvenient? Fact: Delhi is quite large. Tour books list places w/the most guesthouses for obvious reasons, aka “traveler ghettos”, which are conveniently located but also logically attract the most sham artists and tourist pariah, which is precisely what we were trying to avoid.
- Next: Which hotel will truly be clean and secure without costing us several arms and legs? (Note - What you see on the net is not always what you get, particularly in India. And even if it is a good place, the traveler grapevine says there will probably be a basement room or 2 that could rival a mid-evil dungeon.) Arriving at midnight with all our backpacks is not the best time to discover this.
- Lastly: Try making a Skype voice call to India from the Eagle Guest House in Chiang Mai, where we were staying. It’s as though sound quality was akin to the process of making taffy, continually stretching and contracting over and over again. I can’t do the hilarity of the Internet garbled Indian accents we were hearing justice. The kids were literally rolling with laughter, and Jeanne wasn’t far behind. It eventually became so frustrating that all I could do was to respond in my own very extreme Indian accented garble – to create one more layer of entertainment to a futile and frustrating exercise.
Well – this obviously wasn’t going well. It seemed every place recommended was booked, and the choice was looking more and more like either risk staying in a pit and tainting our India experience from the get-go or spend $350 or above for an unmemorable, antiseptic Radisson-like hotel room with the hope that they would take in the 4 of us even though the web site stipulated “2 people per room”. (Money much better spent on something amazingly memorable.) The clock was ticking. Even though we had started our accommodation research prior, we had purchased our flights only one day before, since when we tried to transact on Air Asia’s website over multiple days it wouldn’t accept a US credit card, and when we went to pay at their office in person they couldn’t process our card either – shades of India to come, but I digress…
The stress & despondence of “where are we going to stay” was beginning to take its toll on Jeanne & I. But I had a job to do, and after quite a bit of persistent research, I finally located a B&B in South Delhi, quite a ways from the tourist areas, and rec’d confirmation via email of an available room for one night only (no more were available) including transport from the Delhi airport. Hooray for MAJKFam! Happy times again – let’s go enjoy our last Thai meal and sights. (Note – This type of travel is chock full of ups & downs – very high highs, and pretty low lows. One advantage of doing it as a family is there’s often one of us who can hold a higher notch while the rest of us are low.)
We splurged and took a flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok rather than a 12 hour sleeper train, and overall the flight to BKK and then onward to Delhi was pleasantly uneventful. Well… almost… There was this one little hair-raising glitch in Bangkok. Turns out 3 of our 4 passports were never stamped when we entered Thailand overland from Laos. We all had exit stamps from Laos, but only I had a stamp showing that I had entered Thailand and when that occurred. We actually noticed this several days prior, but were advised it would easily work itself out at the airport, since “it was their mistake and we would already be in their system”, and we should just proceed as normal. We did so, expecting that we would have 3 hours layover in BKK and that would be more than enough. That was theoretically correct, at least until our flight to BKK departed an hour or so late.
As expected we landed in BKK from Chiang Mai, collected our bags, checked our bags to India, got our seats, and proceeded to passport control with what appeared to be over an hour to spare for eating dinner. Nice! So smooth in fact that I had entered a pleasant traveler sense of familiarity, ease and flow. Then the boom dropped. “Would you please step over here and wait in this line?” Jeanne and I glanced at each other. “OK, just be polite… This is straightforward… They messed up at the border… They’re sure to fix it”, we both thought. At least we thought that until we met our nemesis. She was a stiff and gruff, bulldog of an official who curtly told us to go get an Air Asia representative after several minutes of mulling over the situation. “But why?” I responded and calmly presented our side of the story. That went over like huge brick – so all 4 of us dashed to Air Asia and corralled a very nice fellow to help us. I won’t give you a play by play of the next 30-45 harrowing minutes. It’s enough to mention a few snippets we heard including “we don’t have entry stamps here, only exits”, “you need to go back to the Laos border (note: 24-36 hrs away at least) to get your passports properly stamped”, and “there is absolutely nothing I can do.” I need not detail how we’re feeling (and particularly those of us who have not directly dealt with such unyielding, illogical adversity before), as the clock was ticking and our bags had already been loaded onto our India flight. Then there was an alternative offered by our stonewalling official: “Fly to India without a Thai exit stamp,” to which our Air Asia angel mentioned “and if they notice that in India they won’t admit you and either bounce you back to Thailand or send you home to the USA.” Hhhmmm… things were looking very grim, and our attempts to remain polite, positive and optimistic were running extremely thin. But – another official stepped in at the 11.5th hour and actually tried to help us. (What a concept! A Thai official who seemed to take a modest interest in our plight!)She made a few calls, seemed to undermine and upset our Anti-Christ official, and actually compelled her other listless colleague to scrawl several lines of Thai into AJK’s passports which then magically opened up the gates, allowing us to proceed through security.
We had maybe 15-20 minutes before our flight was to depart. Our Air Asia angel worked his radio, directed us through various lines, told us to run as fast as we could, and ultimately sprinted ahead of us to prepare the gate attendants so they could process us quickly. Remember – Kira’s legs are half my length and had a painful cut on the sole of her foot, and we’re all touting carry-ons, but we made it in time nonetheless. On the plane - phew!!! With maybe 2 minutes to spare even! Of course the plane then waited another 20 minutes for half a dozen straggler Indians whom we initially saw ahead of us at the ticket counter, each checking in a sizable Samsung flat screen TV and a large remote controlled toy helicopter. But, we took off, took a few deep breaths, and India here we come!
To end this mini saga, we arrived in Delhi to a pristine and modern airport, which is an extreme opposite of the Delhi airport I flew into 21 years prior. What I recalled and was therefore envisioning was a large, thin walled hangar with windows showcasing shoulder to shoulder Indians who were begging and banging from the outside. But instead there were gleaming advertisements, “travelators”, and all the conveniences of the most modern of airports. We collected our bags, quickly found our diver holding a “Lipson” sign, got into his private car, and took a half hour drive on modern roads and bland cement boulevards to a residential neighborhood. We squeezed our way through a narrow doorway wearing our packs, wearily climbed a few flights of marble stairs, and entered in the K One One “B&B” well past midnight. It looked more like a high ceiling urban apartment than a charming “B&B”, but no matter. We had arrived! Finally! The room was a bit strange, but nice. Everything is a bit strange when you first arrive in a very different country. But we were so exhausted we barely minded the rock hard double bed or the super saggy spare cot in our $125/night room and off to sleep – knowing we would need to find yet another place the next day.
Epilogue:
Turns out that having only 1 night available at the K One One was a blessing in disguise. The next morning I located the “Likir House”, a Tibetan operated guesthouse on the web that had a few open rooms and whose ownership was supposedly connected to the Dalai Lama in some remote way (which projected a sense of caring and trustworthiness). Adam and I walked and then bicycle rickshawed to see it (and getting there was no small task in and of itself – seems even the most ordinary events in India can turn into a mini odyssey.) We liked the $60 room quite a bit. Safe, clean, calm, and even kind of cozy – the respite I had been hoping to find for us to comfortably acclimate into this marvelous, crazy,confronting, colorful, spirited and illogical country.
The Tibetan people there took good care of us. We stayed for one week and left yesterday with an increased appreciation for Tibetan Buddhism, some warm memories and new friends, recommendations of places and guesthouses to visit throughout the country, and enough seasoning to more comfortably explore other parts of India. 
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