Things for which, on returning to Denver, I am newly grateful:

1. Air! Beautiful, crisp, clean, gorgeous mountain air! This sweet life-giving elixir, this ambrosial ether extending to the pure untarnished cerulean! Never again will I malign you. Denver’s intermittent “brown cloud”? Ha! Just a dash of lemon in a glass of spring water.

2. Speaking of water, water! When I got home my water filter pitcher was empty, so you know what I did? I turned on the tap, leaned over and just drank that shit. You know what? It tasted great!

3. Quiet! My god, how did I ever think traffic was noisy here? Walking down Colfax is like strolling through a damn park. Walking through Capitol Hill is like tip-toeing through a meditation hall.

4. My apartment! This place is a mansion! It’s got hot water, electricity, fast internet, windows and doors and everything. You know how many people out there can’t afford doors? A lot, it turns out.

And, of course, my own good health, family and friends, gainful employment, food in my belly, and the money and privilege to have made such a journey in the first place. Apologies if this amounts to the stereotypical “we’re so lucky” message, but really: We are.

On the ghat the bodies burn. It is an ancient, primeval scene, unchanged in its essence for millenia. On two concrete platforms, a smoke-blackened temple above them, five pyres burn in the late afternoon, their flames head-high. Periodically a near-naked figure, dark against the flames, will approach a pyre and vigorously wave a blanket or large fan at its side, stoking the fire, he himself, at this distance, looking bone-thin, a skeletal psychopomp attending his charges. Upon the steps to either side are laid more bodies awaiting this final transformation, wrapped in saffron shrouds and marigolds.

The cows seem to enjoy eating the flowers (discarded when the bodies are laid on their biers), and five or six browse idly on the ghat, along with a single stray goat, profoundly untroubled by reminders of mortality. The humans nearby, too, whether participants or spectators, seem imbued with a deep patience, the timelessness of the ritual communicating itself unspoken. The bodies will each burn in time; they cannot be hurried. On either side of the steps, piled high against the walls, and on boats near the shore, are enormous stacks of cut ironwood, awaiting more pyres, more bodies. The fires burn twenty-four hours a day, ceaselessly, day after day, night after night, century after century.

Evening approaches. Most of the dozens or hundreds of kites out earlier have been drawn in, but one fellow on a nearby boat still tends his, jerking rapidly on the line and then playing it out, the little diamond bobbing and darting directly above the ghat, entirely unheeded. You’re not supposed to take pictures, but periodically a tourist will anyway, to be reminded of the taboo with an unsurprised word from their guide. Our own guide taps at his cell phone in the forepeak, exchanging the occasional word with the boatman, who leans back on his elbows. The boat rocks as another vessel passes behind us, engine chuffing gutturally. The horizon fades to white in all directions, a haze enveloping the far shore of the floodplain, the reaches of the river, the irregular contours of temples, palaces and hotels upon the shore, the smoke overtaking the light. Finally’s it’s dark. Time to go.

The best thing I’ve found in Delhi so far are my hosts here at Safe and Cozy Bed and Breakfast in Defence Colony. The B&B is family-run through AirBnB, and in fact has only one or two rooms, a true micro operation. The room itself is not too remarkable, but it is indeed safe and cozy, spacious and clean, with all the amenities you could ask for.

But the real treasure here is the family that runs it. Each morning I look forward to breakfast with Vinod, the retired father of the family, who has been the soul of hospitality, offering intelligent, congenial conversation, all kinds of information and advice on the city, and much practical assistance, such as providing me with a preloaded metro card for my use. His adult daughter, Vandana, who manages the online side of things, was also very proactive in arranging rides from the airport and warning me about the present currency crisis.

This latter was my overriding concern yesterday. Being forewarned that money from ATMs might not be readily accessible, I brought along a decent amount of American currency to exchange as necessary. Yesterday, though, I discovered that it wasn’t much help: all the foreign currency exchange places were also out of rupees.

Obviously this leaves me in a bad spot. This was further complicated when I found that my credit card was declined (after eating a rather expensive lunch on the notion that I could pay for it that way). The credit-card issue was easily resolved (though I did have to wait until night to call the bank, due to the time difference), but the cash issue isn’t going away until more money gets into distribution. Fortunately, Vinod has contacted his own currency-exchange guy, and it seems promising that today (Friday) I should hear back regarding it. I’m crossing my fingers.

My main outing for the day was to the Baha’i Lotus Temple, a remarkably shaped building in the form of an unfolding lotus, placed at the end of a large park. It was thronged with tourists, especially buses of schoolkids. Some of the older boys asked if they could take a selfie with me, in fact mobbed around me laughing while I stood there grinning foolishly. No worries, but what’s up with that, anyway? Is it like a joke?

 

Lastly, my phone seems to have contracted a virus, with Chrome periodically redirecting me to crap websites. Not sure how it happened, or necessarily how to get rid of it short of wiping the whole system, which I have no desire to do while travelling. Hopefully it isn’t stealing all my personal info too.

“New Delhi will overwhelm your senses!” all the guidebooks say. This is true. What they don’t say is that mostly it overwhelms you with incessant honking and the reek of urine.

God, the traffic! I thought Istanbul’s traffic was a little wild, but Delhi makes Istanbul look like Orderly City, Iowa. Complete chaos. Cars, autorickshaws, bicycles, motorcycles, pedestrians, ox-drawn carts, guys on camels, all fighting for space in a single crazed vehicular melee extending past the horizon. I’m surprised the rickshaw drivers don’t put spikes on their wheels and saw blades on their fenders. Get properly Mad Max up in here.

As a pedestrian, you skirt along the edges of this madness, trusting in the ultimate goodness of the universe and trying to inure yourself to the horns blasting in your ear as drivers warn you that a single wrong move will leave you maimed. Really, the only reason there aren’t corpses lining the streets is that the density mostly prevents anyone from gathering too much speed. Mostly.

And the trash! Come on, India, pick up after yourself. Trash in every gutter and sidewalk, trash literally lining the street, trash piled right by the stairs to the metro, plastic bags, food scraps, dog shit, human shit, unidentifiable small animal remains, it’s all just left there. And the aforementioned urine stench, sometimes so strong you feel like you should be able to see it, distorting the air like faintly yellow gas fumes.

Guess what I’m trying to say is, it ain’t much of a city for pedestrians. That didn’t stop me from spending basically all of yesterday walking, because walking is what I like to do. I don’t think you can really get to know a city without first getting good and lost in it, and that’s just what I did.

First, though, I went by the New Delhi Railway Station to buy a ticket to Varanasi on Friday. I took the metro there, which unlike the chaos of the streets was fast and easy to understand. The B and B manager, Raju, walked me to the station himself (my hosts have been amazingly kind and helpful – more on that later). Finding the official Tourist Information Bureau at the station was an entirely different matter, and in fact I circled essentially the entire station before finally finding it. True to reports, some helpful individual did tell me that the bureau was closed, no doubt intending to direct me to some very helpful travel agency, but I ignored him and pressed on until I found it. This was the first of a long series of well-wishing souls seeking to hustle me into one place or another as the day went on.

I had hoped the bureau at least would accept a credit card, but no such luck, and there went another 1500 precious rupees. Meanwhile I had already seen, and would see more, of the long queues assembled at every functioning ATM and bank entrance.

Having obtained a train ticket, I started walking in the general direction of the Red Fort. I had no particular interest in the fort per se, but when you want to wander, one destination is as good as another. Periodically I would stop and look at my phone to be sure I was moving in the right general direction, and one of these times a helpful young man asked me where I was going. I told him and he pointed me in that direction. Fair enough.

For a while he walked beside me, explaining he was going to exchange some money somewhere and making conversation. Fair enough. Then he said goodbye, and I kept going. A few minutes later I was a bit startled to realize that he was there beside me again, when I thought he’d gone. Was he following me?

Maybe so, but soon enough he vanished for real. At another juncture I again checked my phone, and another helpful fellow again asked where I was going. He, however, discouraged me from going there, saying there were protests there right now and suggesting Connaught Place as a better destination. He also warned me about the touts, and that I shouldn’t take my phone out so much, because someone might steal it.

A few points here: first, I actually don’t think this guy was pushing anything. He really was just being helpful as he saw it. Which shows that there are two types of helpful fellows in Delhi: touts, and guys warning you about touts. Also, everyone kept telling me to not take out my phone too much, which is ridiculous, because everyone else was holding their phones all the time. Like, is a white person’s phone somehow more attractive than an Indian’s phone? Methinks not. Maybe the touts just didn’t want me actually consulting information on my own?

Also everyone wanted to ask about Donald Trump. God, that man is just fucking inescapable. But in a country with a huge Muslim population, the concern is entirely understandable.

I found Connaught Place to be… well, nothing much, really. A bunch of shopping, a whole lot of traffic. But I stopped somewhere for a lunch, pulling away from four child beggars yanking on my sleeves. Lunch was dal makhani and naan: delicious and very buttery.

More walking. Now I really did get lost. I found myself by an enormous Sikh temple, having headed in entirely the wrong direction. Giving up, I took an autorickshaw to Lodi Gardens, no doubt paying three times the regular price (but still only about two or three dollars US, so whatever).

Lodi Gardens was really the highlight of the day. In stark contrast to the hubbub and demands of the rest, the gardens were free, quiet and serene (although the mynahs could be pretty raucous). There were ruins of a mosque, five centuries old, and some very vocal green parakeets, and some random teenager asked to take his picture with me, for some reason. I found a bench and sat and breathed it in.

I arrive in New Delhi around 9:00 p.m. I have been sitting on a second-rate 767 for the last fourteen hours, so I am glad to leave it. Customs is no big deal, as long as you have an Indian visa, and of course you do or they wouldn’t have let you get on the plane in the first place.

Outside customs is the first real challenge of the trip: obtaining money. At the beginning of November India demonetized its 500 and 1000 rupee notes, which is kind of like the U.S. saying that twenties and fifties are just paper now. So everyone now has to either deposit their cash in a bank, or exchange their old bills for new ones. This has understandably caused a run on bank machines, and most of the ATMs simply don’t have any money in them. Out of order. This is true of two of three ATMs at the airport; the sole remaining ATM, naturally, has a line around the block, so to speak, and a guard with an assault rifle standing beside it.

Fortunately, forewarned by my AirBnB host, I have come prepared with a bunch of American bills to exchange. After twenty-five minutes in line at the currency exchange place, I manage to get some money: $100 worth, or 6,000 rupees, which is the most they’ll hand out to one person at a time. Clearly this is going to be an ongoing issue.

Gandhi-faced bills in hand, I find the manager for the AirBnB waiting for me outside with a sign, and I follow him to a taxi. His name is Raju. He says his English isn’t very good, but it’s about a thousand times better than my Hindi, so English it is, and if you know the word for “farmer,” which he does, I’d say your language skills are in good shape. Raju is of medium height, round face, round build, short hair, mustache and stubble. The driver, whose name I don’t catch and whose face I don’t see until we arrive, has a turban and a beard and speaks no English. In any case, I am more than content to let conversation be and stare out the window.

So: Delhi. First, maybe you’ve heard that the air in Delhi is really bad right now. Like, some of the worst on planet Earth. And there is, in fact, a noticeable haze in the air, like a low-lying fog, except it’s not fog, it’s more like you’re sitting a little too close to a campfire that someone just threw a bunch of plastic bags into. Makes your throat a bit scratchy, after a while.

It probably doesn’t help the pollution that even at ten at night there are a great many cars out, about as many as Denver has during rush hour. (Denverites seriously have no idea how not bad their traffic is.) The taxi I’m in feels like it was built in China circa 1980 – just guessing here – with patterened tan seat covers made probably right here in India, circa 1985. True to mundus inversus British Empire form, the driver’s seated on the right side (i.e. the wrong side) of the vehicle.

Along with the usual sedans and whatnot – nearly all of Asian make, though – there are many more motorcycles and mopeds than in the U.S., driving with a commendably brazen disregard for the probability of crippling accidents. This likewise applies to bicyclists, and with such daily risking of life and limb one begins to see the need for religion. Lanes seem entirely nominal, like just a sort of suggestion that you should feel free to disregard, and there is the usual honking of horns to announce that all need beware, for death and injury are nigh. I also look with some delight at the auto-rickshaws, coneyances I have often heard mentioned but never seen with my own eyes, like something out a gritty noir alternate-reality story. Just one wheel in front! Ha!

There are few lawns, a good number of palm trees, shops close to the streets, plenty of signs of all types. And a surprising number of people about, mostly men, from what I saw. Men driving, men crossing the street in groups, men riding bicycles, lined up outside a bank (at 10 p.m.!), doing something at a juice stand. Do Indians just like to go out at night?

Finally we arrive at the bed and breakfast. I tip the driver too much and head upstairs with Raju. It is, of course, basically someone’s home: specifically, that of Vinod, who is there doing something in the kitchen, a tall gent whose white hair, spectacles, and neat clothing give him the distinguished air of a professor, which for all I know he is. I don’t really know the etiquette here, but I am happy enough to retreat to my room, which is perfectly nice in a dingy, dark, comfortable kind of way.

And here I sit still, typing this on my Bluetooth keyboard and tablet. With luck, I’ll even sleep a little, although I’m now a good twelve hours out of sync with Denver. Tomorrow my aim is to buy a train ticket to Varanasi for Friday. Hopefully I can pay for it with a credit card, because this cash ain’t gonna go far…