After 3 days in Delhi I was more afraid of Delhi than I was of putting my bike together and getting the hell out of there. I'd started to think that the constant 'Good Morning Sirs' of the hotel staff were actually 'Oh No, Not You Agains'. I built my bike on Thursday morning, and then I attempted to check out.
This turned into an admin tangle of epic proportions. I had to pay my room bill on one bill, I had to pay to store my bike bag on another and settle the minibar bill on a third one.
For 3 days there had been someone outside my room every time I left it asking me if I was checking out. The day I actually did want to check out there was no one around so I lugged my own bike and three panniers down the stairs to reception. The hotel staff then crowded round my bike saying things like 'Wow, gears', and generally being astounded by its technological advancement.
As soon as I left the hotel I felt better. Being on a bike was actually easier than being a pedestrian. For a start no-one could offer me postcards or to sell me weed, and also I already had a form of transport so I didn't need to hire one, which kept the tuktuk drivers at bay.
I realised straightaway that the best thing to do in the city was pick someone and follow them, and the streets are so crowded there's always someone going your way. When they peel off, you just follow someone else.
I picked up Dean and we headed out of Delhi. We had a few wrong turns, one of which involved cycling across twelve lanes of traffic, but I soon realised, if there isn't a gap, you have to make one. The movement of traffic is very fluid, and most people if they see you, will let you go.
We had a nice chat with some Indian soldiers and they confirmed that we were going the right way. The army seem to operate in threes over here. There's a talkative one with a name badge who's the boss, a younger one who chips in the odd words and then a silent stary one with a machine gun over his shoulder who just looks menacing. They shook our hands and wished us well, except for the mad starey one who just stared.
The cycling was actually good fun at this point. There were so many categories of vehicle and we were in the top half speed wise. We were faster than pedestrians, rickshaws, other cyclists, horse drawn vehicles, cow drawn vehicles, some of the tuktuks and some of the mopeds. There was no such thing as riding in a straight line, it's all weaving, but you have to live in the moment, and despite the odd vehicle or cow coming towards you on the wrong side of the road, it's quite fluid and it works.
Mostly there's a hierarchy, and mostly people ride or drive on the left, but nothing is certain. The horn isn't used to sound alarm, it's used to say "I'm here!', and the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the horn. Most of the cars don't have wing mirrors, but there's generally no need to look behind you, because you can tell the size of the approaching thing by the horn sound. The buses and trucks have the biggest horns and if one of those goes off next to you, it's like an atom bomb going off next to your head.
I'd expected it to get quite rural once we got out of Delhi, but it was people all the way to Meerut. We hardly saw a field, it was just wall to wall people.
It was all dual carriageway or wider for the whole first day's ride, to Meerut. We hadn't set off till lunchtime, so when it got to about 5 o'clock we thought we should probably stop. We hadn't really understood the scale of the map so we were thinking Meerut would be a small town. It is compared to Delhi, but it's actually probably about the same size as the whole of Leeds, so riding into it to look for somewhere to stay could have taken hours. We passed a place at the roadside, the largest place we'd seen so far. It was called The Big Bite Food Resort, and there was a very colourful Indian party going on there.
We went in and enquired about a room. About half an hour later and after having to walk about a mile around the complex, they showed us a room. It wasn't bad, but it was the same price as the one in Delhi and it seemed to have nothing actually working in it, including the TV and the wifi. Also, it had a double bed rather than the twin beds we'd asked for. Dean managed to get 10% off the price for this, and the bed looked pretty wide, in fact wide enough for three, so I was confident there wouldn't be any accidental crossovers. We couldn't be bothered to spend another half an hour backing out of the place, so we took the room. The rate was 2300 rupees which is about 30 quid, and on reflection it was crap value for money. The receptionist insisted on payment up front, and he also insisted on taking our passports for photocopying. On reflection the Big Bite part of the name probably refers to the big bite the place takes out of your wallet. It should probably be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act, if they have one in India, because it barely qualifies as a resort either. A more accurate name for the place might have been the Small Bite Shithole.
The hotel turned out to have been modelled on Fawlty Towers, except without the politeness. We went for a meal in the food court. A young man tried to take out order, but as soon as he had started to write it down, another much ruder man came over and demanded to know what we wanted. When I said we needed more time to decide, he claimed not to understand what I was saying although his English was otherwise pretty good. Under pressure I tried to order a something massala but he told me that was no good because it was gravy, so I ordered chicken curry and rice. When it came, I'm not certain it was chicken because the joints that were in the sauce didn't look like joints I've ever seen on a chicken, but I ate it anyway, the sauce wasn't bad.
I gave the younger first waiter quite a big tip with the bill, partly to annoy the second waiter and off we went.
A nice surprise when we got back to the room was a phone call from Ruth and Stephen, although Ruth took some persuading to believe that I was actually doing stuff over here, and not just hiding in the room.
The truth is, I've hardly stopped doing stuff since I got here. And even before I set off from England I felt like I hadn't stopped doing stuff for about 10 days before that. With the visa, and the travel arrangements, and the putting the bike together arrangements, then the flight over here, the hanging round in the airport looking for stuff, the crazy ride to the hotel, meeting Dean and Elsa, a day in Old Delhi, a day in New Delhi, and then putting the bike together and riding my bike here for a day, and all this without sleeping more than about 4 hours a night and not understanding from one minute to the next what the hell is going on, I feel like I've never stopped doing stuff. As Dean said, there was more stuff I could have done, but it was mostly going on in the evenings, by which time I'd been overloaded to oblivion with so much sensory input during the day that I felt like my head was going to blow off anyway. So I'm trying to break India down into manageable bite size chunks. Not really succeeding, but trying.
This turned into an admin tangle of epic proportions. I had to pay my room bill on one bill, I had to pay to store my bike bag on another and settle the minibar bill on a third one.
For 3 days there had been someone outside my room every time I left it asking me if I was checking out. The day I actually did want to check out there was no one around so I lugged my own bike and three panniers down the stairs to reception. The hotel staff then crowded round my bike saying things like 'Wow, gears', and generally being astounded by its technological advancement.
As soon as I left the hotel I felt better. Being on a bike was actually easier than being a pedestrian. For a start no-one could offer me postcards or to sell me weed, and also I already had a form of transport so I didn't need to hire one, which kept the tuktuk drivers at bay.
I realised straightaway that the best thing to do in the city was pick someone and follow them, and the streets are so crowded there's always someone going your way. When they peel off, you just follow someone else.
I picked up Dean and we headed out of Delhi. We had a few wrong turns, one of which involved cycling across twelve lanes of traffic, but I soon realised, if there isn't a gap, you have to make one. The movement of traffic is very fluid, and most people if they see you, will let you go.
We had a nice chat with some Indian soldiers and they confirmed that we were going the right way. The army seem to operate in threes over here. There's a talkative one with a name badge who's the boss, a younger one who chips in the odd words and then a silent stary one with a machine gun over his shoulder who just looks menacing. They shook our hands and wished us well, except for the mad starey one who just stared.
The cycling was actually good fun at this point. There were so many categories of vehicle and we were in the top half speed wise. We were faster than pedestrians, rickshaws, other cyclists, horse drawn vehicles, cow drawn vehicles, some of the tuktuks and some of the mopeds. There was no such thing as riding in a straight line, it's all weaving, but you have to live in the moment, and despite the odd vehicle or cow coming towards you on the wrong side of the road, it's quite fluid and it works.
Mostly there's a hierarchy, and mostly people ride or drive on the left, but nothing is certain. The horn isn't used to sound alarm, it's used to say "I'm here!', and the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the horn. Most of the cars don't have wing mirrors, but there's generally no need to look behind you, because you can tell the size of the approaching thing by the horn sound. The buses and trucks have the biggest horns and if one of those goes off next to you, it's like an atom bomb going off next to your head.
I'd expected it to get quite rural once we got out of Delhi, but it was people all the way to Meerut. We hardly saw a field, it was just wall to wall people.
It was all dual carriageway or wider for the whole first day's ride, to Meerut. We hadn't set off till lunchtime, so when it got to about 5 o'clock we thought we should probably stop. We hadn't really understood the scale of the map so we were thinking Meerut would be a small town. It is compared to Delhi, but it's actually probably about the same size as the whole of Leeds, so riding into it to look for somewhere to stay could have taken hours. We passed a place at the roadside, the largest place we'd seen so far. It was called The Big Bite Food Resort, and there was a very colourful Indian party going on there.
We went in and enquired about a room. About half an hour later and after having to walk about a mile around the complex, they showed us a room. It wasn't bad, but it was the same price as the one in Delhi and it seemed to have nothing actually working in it, including the TV and the wifi. Also, it had a double bed rather than the twin beds we'd asked for. Dean managed to get 10% off the price for this, and the bed looked pretty wide, in fact wide enough for three, so I was confident there wouldn't be any accidental crossovers. We couldn't be bothered to spend another half an hour backing out of the place, so we took the room. The rate was 2300 rupees which is about 30 quid, and on reflection it was crap value for money. The receptionist insisted on payment up front, and he also insisted on taking our passports for photocopying. On reflection the Big Bite part of the name probably refers to the big bite the place takes out of your wallet. It should probably be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act, if they have one in India, because it barely qualifies as a resort either. A more accurate name for the place might have been the Small Bite Shithole.
The hotel turned out to have been modelled on Fawlty Towers, except without the politeness. We went for a meal in the food court. A young man tried to take out order, but as soon as he had started to write it down, another much ruder man came over and demanded to know what we wanted. When I said we needed more time to decide, he claimed not to understand what I was saying although his English was otherwise pretty good. Under pressure I tried to order a something massala but he told me that was no good because it was gravy, so I ordered chicken curry and rice. When it came, I'm not certain it was chicken because the joints that were in the sauce didn't look like joints I've ever seen on a chicken, but I ate it anyway, the sauce wasn't bad.
I gave the younger first waiter quite a big tip with the bill, partly to annoy the second waiter and off we went.
A nice surprise when we got back to the room was a phone call from Ruth and Stephen, although Ruth took some persuading to believe that I was actually doing stuff over here, and not just hiding in the room.
The truth is, I've hardly stopped doing stuff since I got here. And even before I set off from England I felt like I hadn't stopped doing stuff for about 10 days before that. With the visa, and the travel arrangements, and the putting the bike together arrangements, then the flight over here, the hanging round in the airport looking for stuff, the crazy ride to the hotel, meeting Dean and Elsa, a day in Old Delhi, a day in New Delhi, and then putting the bike together and riding my bike here for a day, and all this without sleeping more than about 4 hours a night and not understanding from one minute to the next what the hell is going on, I feel like I've never stopped doing stuff. As Dean said, there was more stuff I could have done, but it was mostly going on in the evenings, by which time I'd been overloaded to oblivion with so much sensory input during the day that I felt like my head was going to blow off anyway. So I'm trying to break India down into manageable bite size chunks. Not really succeeding, but trying.
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