New Delhi - Goodbye India
We made our way back to Delhi. We had contacted the Chabad in Delhi, (a Jewish Center for locals and travelers) and we were really excited about our first kosher food and real shabbos in a while. We spent Friday looking for the Chabad.. We had the address, we showed it to a lot of people – no one could help us. The best we could do is get to the street and start searching.
The street name is Main Bazaar. Its crazy. The street is lined with shops selling all kinds of souvenirs and handicrafts. These salesman are not the passive type – they run after you, following you sometimes for blocks. So at this point we are dodging salesman, cows, cars, buses and tuk-tuks looking for this Chabad house. The street numbers make no sense we are walking up and down the street and keep going past the same shopkeepers that we gave the cold shoulder to on the way up the street. Finally on like the 3rd or 4th pass we start asking people for the address, then as we are reaching for straws Danna says to a random Indian “you know Chabad?” He says “everyone knows chabad” and points us to a small alley and we see a small picture of the Rebbe with an arrow. We follow a winding narrow path also lined with 4 army guards. These armed security guards sat in front of a stairway that led up to our first Chabad house of the trip.
Chabad houses are incredible. This place was small and out of the way. But come Friday night and there is about 15-20 guys and all of a sudden as the room is transformed from shul to dining room and within minutes 50 people around the tables sharing a shabbos meal. Lucky for us, there was a nice American Israeli family also traveling through India and there for shabbos along with a businessman from Brooklyn – so there was some English spoken and some new friends made.
Shabbos in Delhi was really nice, but after 3 weeks in India we were ready to move on. Our flight to Bangkok was Saturday night at midnight and we were looking forward to the next leg of the trip. We wanted to get to the airport early because we cannot afford to miss this flight.
We hired a cab – he is twenty five minutes late. We had time we weren't late - I wasn't worried. The cab came we were on our way. The airport is a little ways out of town and India traffic is a bit insane. But it was late at night, we had time – I wasn't worried. It was a little foggy out at the start of the trip and Danna said “can a plane take off in fog?” I said it is not so bad – I wasn't worried. Then we got on to the highway and we were swallowed in the thickest fog I have ever seen. As the cab was still zooming down the highway with terrible visibility I still wasn't worried about the flight – now I was worried about making it to the airport -period! Amazingly, things went from really bad to worse. Visibility was maybe 5-10 feet. We kept driving and weaving around cars and tuk-tuks that would mysteriously emerge out of the fog as we got right up behind them. Cars were pulled over all over the road – I was very scared. My biggest fear at that moment was the cab driver saying he would not keep going and we would miss our flight and the rest of the trips flights would be canceled! But- we did not stop -the driver was amazing. He had a sixth sense of where vehicles would be and I guess he knew the roads by heart, because there was no way to see the direction the road was curving ahead. The fog was shocking. I tried to take pictures – they just came out bright white – nothing to focus on.
We had never seen anything like it – and apparently either had the Delhi Airport because after a few hours of delays the entire airport closed down. Dozens of flights grounded – other inbound flights were rerouted all over India and Asia. We spoke with a representative from Cathay Pacific – she said they were taking care of everything and would be putting us up in a hotel for the night until we could take off the next day. Cathay Pacific was excellent under the circumstances and bused the entire flight to the Radisson and even had a breakfast buffet for the entire plane the next morning.
All Danna and I kept saying to each other was I can't believe we have to spend another night in India. It was a fascinating, emotional, exhausting roller coaster of a trip and just when we thought it was over – we have to stay one more night.
But that really sums up traveling in India. You think you can plan, you think things will work out like they do on paper. Then you get to India and within a few minutes you realize that plans and routes and itineraries mean nothing here. It is a place where you need to go with the flow because trying to go against it will probably get you run over by a cow.