My First Auto Ride

Driving in India is insane. But believe it or not, it's actually less insane than in Bangladesh, so it's actually been comparatively nicer here. Still, it's ridiculous. Today I took my first trip in an auto, which here isn't synonymous with car, but instead refers to these three-wheeled open-air taxis (in Bangladesh they called the baby taxis or CNGs because they run on Compressed Natural Gas). There are no seatbelts and with the crazy driving, you could fall out at any moment, so I was holding on for dear life, with my huge backpack between my legs.

I went to Jummah (Friday prayers) at my mosque in Delhi. At first, people were a little suspicious (which is to be expected, my sect is pretty highly persecuted in this part of the world, so safety is definitely a concern for them), but as soon as I showed them a picture I have of me with the leader of our sect, I was very warmly received by the people there. They showed me around and invited me to stay in the guest house there.

After Jummah, I had an awful, awful time trying to get to my hotel. First, someone from the mosque helped me get onto a bus. We literally had to walk through the streets, with the cars driving around us, and I had to hop onto a moving vehicle. Then I got to the train station, where I had to navigate an incredibly confusing train map that gave me no hint as to what stop I needed to get off at to get to my hotel. I finally figured it out, got to my destination station, and then had to take a cab. The first four cab drivers tried all quoted ridiculous fares, I finally settled on one driver who had the least inflated fare. Unfortunately, he didn't know where my hotel was (none of them really did, as far as I could tell), so he dropped me off somewhere near where I needed to be and then it took me another 20 minutes of searching to find the hotel.

My new hotel is in Gurgaon, where a lot of the multinational corporations have their presence in India, Google included. The whole reason I'm here is because my friend KB lives around here and I wanted to meet up with her and I still feel so badly that she came all that way without getting to see me because of the train delay. So tonight we finally go to meet up. She picked me up and took me to her uncle's house, where she is living. Her aunt and uncle are awesome. They're young, really friendly and super welcoming. They took us out tonight to a trendy spot in New Delhi. This is definitely a side of Delhi I haven't seen before. There's... wealth here. I had the second most expensive Coca-cola of my life at ~$4 (the first was in Spain and it was 6 euros, about $8). It was so nice to be with friends for a night.