Day 2: More Scams Ensue

I’m sitting in a hotel room and finally comfortable after an exhausting day, but it cost me. It cost me oh so dearly. In money. I woke up at 5am, ready to take on the world. I went down to the receptionist to once again fail at communicating or learning anything that I wanted to know about and all my complex questions were answered with the word “yes” accompanied with a little head tilt shake thing. This head thing is performed ubiquitously in Delhi. It looks like someone repeatedly trying to crack their neck or trying to tell you to follow them into the bathroom to do some coke. I set off for the train station, a short walk away, in hopes of finding a comforting voice that speaks the king’s english. I found one, though he wasn’t overly helpful. The man said the 7:20am train to Amritsar was booked, but another was leaving at 11am. And that I needed to get my bike to the parcel office. I was excited to get on that 11am train and out of Delhi. I went back to the hostel and tried to think about how I was going to get the bike box to the train station. I knew it was a little complicated because I needed to ship the bike on my train through a separate ticket with the parcel office. But the parcel office is on the other side of the tracks and it’s a bit of a walk, and I couldn’t carry the box there on my own. I also didn’t feel like summoning a cab again either. So I spontaneously decided to build my bike. I figured it wouldn’t take long and it’ll be built if I take any other trains in the future anyway. This was a long and harrowing process. I had neglected to take any photos prior to disassembly and I paid the price for this. I had a bag full of all the screws I’d hurriedly taken off and needed to figure out where they went and which washers went with them etc… After a good amount of doing, redoing, and redoing again, I pretty much had the bike built. I wasn’t able to tighten the stem enough to keep the handlebars from coming loose and I couldn’t get the pedals on for the life of me. By then it was already 11am. I’m not sure how I took so long but I did, so that 11am train wasn’t going to happen. I was drenched in sweat, doing it all in the “traveler’s lounge” area while the hostel workers slept all around me, waking up whenever I accidentally dropped my allen key. Sorry guys. Max the dog kept me good company though, even if he was a little overly insistent on receiving belly rubs. I looked up a bike shop using the hostel wifi and there was an area that seemed to have multitudes of them. I took my fully loaded bike, checked out, and without a sim card or any idea what I was doing left the relative safety of my hostel. The second I got on the bike the pedal I was trying to screw in fell off, so I walked. I went though a narrow network of alleys that almost could’ve been the gothic section of Barcelona had it not been for the motorcycles occupying every inch of space, filling it with exhaust and the cacophony of their horns, somehow making a narrow walking path into a busy two-way highway. The motorists have a strange mixture of patience and impatience. Sometimes a vendor of some sort is slowly pushing a cumbersome wagon, causing a complete stand still in traffic, and everyone waits without a hint of protest. Other times, the flow is normal and fine but they honk loudly and arbitrarily at anything as they drive. It’s just what they do, and no one is in the least bothered by it. I arrived at what I thought would be a bike shop. Like, you know, a real bike shop where there’s a brick and mortar store with bikes and there’s people working on the bikes who are knowledgable and have spare parts and such. Instead what I saw was like an outdoor version of the Walmart bike section with a few squatting men tinkering around with rudimentary tools. People kept signaling me to go forward, pointing towards something up ahead, until I finally arrived at a melanated, squatting mechanic working on a children’s bike. It’s incredible how they can just squat forever where I can barely hold the position for 10 seconds. I showed him that I needed pedals put on and he immediately took it from there. He figured out that I put the pedals on the wrong side and used other pedals the had to kind of rescrew the pilot holes and he figured out that I put the screw for the stem in the wrong way. It would come out to 500 rupees. I realized I had no cash left from the 19 dollars I changed at the airport. I asked if there was a bank nearby and one of the 6 men who was just sitting there watching accompanied me to the bank. It seems to be a habit for Indians to over employ people, and always have 10 men watching for 1 man working. I remember leaving the airport seeing around 30 people working at the duty free, with no customers. That tells me how cheap the labor here must be. The ATM machine doesn’t accept my cards. I try another, same thing. I’m panicking. I don’t have a means of withdrawing money in the biggest cash only economy on Earth, and I owe a humble bicycle repair man 500 rupees. His friend watches me, unable to communicate, repeatedly giving me the ambiguous head shake thing. I can see the disappointment as I explain I’m not getting anywhere. It’s hot, I’m tired, I’m anxious, I’m flushed, I’m sweating. I keep trying. I talk to a bank worker, who mercifully speaks some English. The first person I’ve met who can speak my language. He sees how badly I’m schvitzing and sympathetically has me take a seat inside the ivory tower that is the bank and gives me a glass of water. Now I feel like I’ve entered civilized society. My guide clearly feels uneasy entering the bank, he watches me from outside. A glass door separates us. I check my Chase account with the banks wifi and it says travel notifications are no longer necessary. So why isn’t it working? Maybe the problem is the card itself? I don’t know what to do. I try again and fail again, then return to the bicycle repairman with my tail between my legs. He is understanding, and he and his friends assure me I will give him the money tomorrow when I figure it out. He gives me a QR code for mobile payment just in case. 

For the first time, I ride my bicycle. It’s really not pleasant. Nothing is pleasant in Delhi in the heat and the traffic. It is a place that absolutely rejects the joy and freedom of cycling. As children walk up to you with their hands out, begging you for charity, and rickshaws and motorbikes miss you by centimeters, honking enthusiastically to announce themselves, and the sun beats down on you and the dust in the air coats your lungs. I realized I hadn’t eaten yet, I hadn’t had a bite since I landed the previous day, and I was dehydrated, and my heart was beating in a way that wasn’t good or normal. Perhaps anxiety, perhaps heat exhaustion. It was bad. It felt bad. I biked to the parcel office at the train station. Of course, it wasn’t what I imagined. I had been thinking a cute little FedEx situation, where a wise old man accepts my parcel and then I’m off. No, there was a line a kilometer long, outside in the heat, and it resembled more a silk road caravan than anything else. People were unloading serious wares, agricultural products that smelled pungently, and lots of them. But it was also a slum. The saddest dogs I’ve seen on this planet were there, panting and baking in the unforgiving heat, their eyes decomposing and insects making homes in their fur. And some of the saddest humans too, squatting around, laying around, darkened by the sun, looking at me with what could be perceived as contempt or curiosity, suffering from a multitude of skin conditions, their arms and legs skeletal. Some old men with cloth rushed up to me to compete for who had the right to wrap my bicycle up in cloth. I tried to explain I didn’t yet have a ticket. They didn’t understand and kept trying to wrap my bike in cloth. I was starting to feel dizzy and having trouble looking at people and talking to them. I stood at the parcel office, waiting for someone to give me attention. It was futile. No one spoke English, no one could give me proper advice. The heat was really getting to me, I felt seriously unwell. I also knew that I did not belong in this place, and I wanted someone to realize this and take me where I belonged. Take me to safety. Speak English to me. For the love of God somebody help me. Finally I win an audience with one of the mustached bureaucrats. The man explained I needed to buy a regular ticket before I get a parcel ticket. Of course. It was all a waste coming here. Why am I so stupid. So back on the bike, across the bridge, under the unforgiving sun, I go to the train station. The heart pounding has gotten worse, I’m thinking how embarrassing it would be if I passed out. I just want to be in that train, hopefully air conditioned, going to Amritsar, leaving this urban hellscape behind, never to return again. The train station feels more like a UN refugee camp. People are lying all over, looking loathsome and desperate, staring at me, insects swarming everywhere, the air is thick and muggy, a police officer points me towards the ticket office. The line is long. I’m having difficulty breathing. I’m delirious at this point and can’t stand still. There’s no escape from the heat and it’s enveloping me. Is it just the anxiety or am I actually going to faint or choke in this thick air or worse? As I wait in line, a man asks me where I’m trying to go, I say Amritsar. He shakes his head and tells me I should buy from another place. Fine, that’s fine, I can’t take it here anymore, get me out of here. He leads to me to a small travel agency outside the train station. There is a tiny fan there and I push my face against it. It’s something. It provides a little relief. The men look at me curiously, because this heat is nothing crazy to them. The travel agent tells me Amritsar is bought out, and there won’t be another train for several days because of the G20 summit. How could I possibly have this kind of luck? Why didn’t I think about this? Stuck in Delhi for days? Absolutely not, I’ll throw myself in the Yamuna before I spend another day in this place. With my knees on the ground and my face pressed against the fan, I look at the posters on the wall and see a picture of Srinigar, Kashmir. It looks like heaven. Mountains, forests, lakes. The antithesis of Delhi. It is my salvation. It glows and winks at me, come here Nick, all will be good, just come here. I point at it in desperation and say that’s where I want to go, take me there. A man tells me he can take me somewhere and they will help me. Yes, of course, why not, I trust everyone at this point. Everyone is on the same team right now, team Help Nick Now. He gets in his rickshaw and I cycle behind him, weaving through the 6 lane traffic of Delhi. This feels a little fun actually, something like an adventure, except for the heat and my anxiety.

We come to an area that’s a little more posh and sparse than the others, I feel more comfortable here. I enter another travel agency, purportedly affiliated with the government, and it’s air conditioned. It’s actually kind of.. nice. I sit in a chair and it feels like everything that had occurred earlier was just a bad dream, some kind of hallucination. The fear, the despair, the weakness in my heart. I could have died in sweat and sewage, and now I’m in a real building and the air is cool and I can breathe and I feel like I may just live. The man sitting across is kind, and he actually speaks English well, he even has a sense of humor, it’s more than enough for me to instantly fall in love with him. I confess to the man I feel unwell and haven’t eaten yet. He has someone bring over food. He was patient and let me eat and the food was so delicious. My first meal in India. Daal and vegetables with rice. My first cup of chai. Sweet and milky and spicy and delicious. It’s perfect, everything is okay now. I was seduced, he had me. I was lubed up and ready for it. We discussed my options. He could get me to Amritsar, maybe, but why would I want to go there? It’ll be hot, just like Delhi, and the traffic from Amritsar to Srinagar is like Delhi traffic he said, the whole way he said. He was also trying to talk me out of cycling in India in general, why would I want to ride a bike here, and he made compelling arguments, but I told him I was in too deep already and had no choice. My best bet was a flight to Srinigar the next day, before the vice of G20 finishes choking off the city. Another plane, damn it. I told him I didn’t want to box the bike up again, reflecting on the hours I spent taking it apart and putting it back together. He told me they could ship it to Srinagar with a courier. This was all starting to sound terribly expensive, he was even throwing in a hotel for the night, a city tour, and 3 nights in Srinagar with meals. As I continued feasting and feeling comfortable he took out a calculator and crunched some numbers. The grand total came to 45,000 rupees, $541 dollars, for a flight, a bike shipment, a driver to and from the hotel, 4 hotel nights, and meals included. I thought about it, the delicious food and the comfort of the AC and the kindness of the man wooed me into a state of obeisance. I considered my other options of doing it myself, it hadn’t gotten me far. The city would be shut down for the next few days, and I didn’t want to be stuck inside of it. And this man was my friend now. Why would I haggle with a friend? If that’s what he said the prices were then that’s what they were and I just needed to bite the bullet. I nodded. More chai arrived to celebrate the sealing of the deal. Then it was all business. Passport now, needs to be copied. Money, we need the money now. ATM wasn’t working? No problem let’s try. He took me to an ATM and told me to press current, which I hadn’t chosen because it was listed as “business account”. instead of savings. Money came out, miraculously, and I had cash. I asked him to send money to the bicycle repairman and he did. We were in business. My driver arrived, a cool looking dude with an earring and a great mustache. When I walked outside, the rickshaw driver, who’d been there the whole time, asked me if I’d tip him. Of course, he’d stuck around this entire time because I’d neglected to give him a tip. I took out 100 rupees and he thanked me.

It wasn’t a good day for sightseeing, the G20 summit had closed everything. The taxi driver kept joking to me about how Joe Biden was coming tonight and I should ask him for money. I don’t get it either. We went to an old Islamic tomb from the Mughal empire. 600 rupees entry fee, fine why not. I wandered around and a smiling security guard started talking to me. Before I knew it he was giving me a tour. I realized he was probably hustling me for a tip, and the anxiety of dealing with that ruined his tour for me. In what world are security guards giving tourists tours and soliciting tips? India, that’s where. He forced me to let him take pictures of me, which is a sure sign of someone who is soon going to solicit a tip. I acted fast. I briskly shook his hand and turned around to avoid the tip conversation and it worked. What was he going to do? Chase after me? As I entered another area a young man asked if I’d take his picture. We got to talking and he asked in all seriousness if I needed a tour guide or had any work for him? Come on dude, read the room! After that we went to the Baha’i lotus temple, a rather impressive building. It was free and no one asked me for tips, so I guess I’m Baha’i now? The driver, Ajit, was a really cool guy. We were having a blast and then I realized why he was being so nice. Turns out he has his own travel company and he gave me his number and asked me to call him if I wanted a tour of Rajasthan, but of course don’t say a word of this to the other travel agency. Everyone in India has something up their sleeve. If they’re smiling at you and speaking English reasonably well they have something to sell. We finally made it to my hotel, he came up with me to see me off. I wondered if he would solicit a tip. But he didn’t, he gave me prayer hands and said namaste. He probably wanted a tip though. Everyone wants a tip. I miss Europe. Also I definitely got scammed. I looked up the flight to Srinagar and it’s 56 dollars and he had quoted me $200, the serpent. But the bike courier thing is great, and the fact I don’t have to plan any of this myself is… nice, I guess? But wasn’t the point of traveling alone to be more self reliant? I feel like I failed very early and in some kind of fundamental way, I allowed myself to be played by a travel agent when I was desperate and vulnerable. But I’m not sure I could’ve come up with something better on my own. At any rate, at a steep price of around $600 for maybe $300 worth of services, it’s not a mistake I can really afford to repeat. I appreciate the quick fix this time around though, but it sets a discomforting precedent for the rest of my trip.