First Impressions - 23rd April

Heat. At gone midnight and leaving an air-conditioned cabin it was a shock and everyone remarked on it. ‘Don’t forget’, I said cheerfully, more to convince myself then anything else, ‘we’re standing next to a hot plane’. Some agreed, but the more knowledgeable held their peace. Just ignore me, for I knew nothing. It’s hot.

This place is INSANE. Walking down the corridor from baggage collection (waited almost an hour) it is lined with kiosks offering taxi services, hotels and money changing. Arms beckon from over the glass partition as rivals vie for custom.

The taxi to the hotel at 2am started rather badly. A lad in the hotel livery helped me out with my luggage to where he had left the car, but it had moved on. When he located it a policeman was sitting in the passenger seat haranguing the young driver for waiting in the wrong place. I was ignorant of all this – I didn’t even recognize a police uniform. I sat in the back with my things, the car sat there for a while with exchanges and silences between the two in the front. The young man made a phone call and offered the passenger money, which was refused. I felt distinctly uneasy, unable to grasp a word and feared I had entered an Indian scam about which so much is written in the travel books. Then the passenger got out and crossed the road to strike a reversing vehicle with his stick. The hotel lad explained the problem and it sorted itself out (I have a sneaky suspicion that money did change hands, but out of the view of the tourist)
There then followed the most bizarre drive. At breakneck speed, with the horn blaring constantly at traffic and pedestrians. It is 2.30 in the morning! What are these people doing? We drove over two ‘sleeping policemen’ as though they were lines on the road and on each occasion I left my seat.

By the roadside there were handcarts like the wheeled stretchers of the Great War, with bodies lying on them. Then I saw bodies lying at the side of the road and in the central reservation. Not bodies. People. This was their bed for the night; this is where they lived. Yes of course I knew all this, but it’s very sobering at first hand.

Singh’s hotel is great. There’s a main foyer with an executive side, and a budget side. I’m the budget side. It was clean and tidy, with cheery, helpful staff even at that hour. The room was without livestock, en-suite and air-con, which was loud and gale force 8. A rickety fan revolved above my head, its spindle oscillating through an over-large hole in the ceiling. I turned it to low to reduce the danger of it falling on me in what was left of the night. It took several attempts to balance, coolness, wind speed and noise and I was hopping in and out of bed until it must have been very late.

My mobile – my clock – wasn’t roaming and I had lost all idea of time. I didn’t have a radio and I was missing the World Service.

I awoke to the most enormous racket. I had been aware of the honking for a while but this was chatter. They were the voices of many labourers who gathered outside waiting to be hired. During breakfast I watched their numbers dwindle until it became quiet (ish).