New Delhi, India - Day 1

For those of you who don't know already, I was sent to India to work with a couple web developers that work for my company. They need some training on a particular code base that they will be taking over.

I arrived in New Delhi at about 1AM on Saturday. I went through customs and had a surprising experience. I brought trail mix with me (on advice from a co-worker who said to make sure I had some food handy.) On the customs form I declared that I had nuts and seeds. But nobody ever looked at anything I had. I just walked on out after getting my bag. The other fun part about this was the hotmail address used as a place to direct questions on the bottom of all the official looking custom signs everywhere.

The hotel driver was sent to the airport from the hotel where we will be staying. My one coworker is from Mumbai and she's spending this weekend with her family and meeting at work on Monday and my boss is coming a week later, so I'm on my own this weekend. Which suites me just fine.

There was a hotel snafu where they knew they had to pick me up from the airport, but somehow they messed up the hotel reservation so I didn't actually have a room when I arrived here at 2AM. They were full. It was suggested that I sit in the lobby and wait the 8 hours or so until somebody left and a room was ready for me. Keep in mind that this is a several hundred (US) per night place (chosen by my work) and that I had just finished flying for 24 hours. I ended up going down the street in the middle of the night and getting a room somewhere else.

My first impression of India is how spiritual it is. It seems like everybody has this calmness that we just don't have in the US. And despite the calmness in each person, this place is chaos. Take traffic for example. Everybody honks and flashes their lights. It's their way of making sure they're "seen". Trucks even have signs on their backs that say "please honk". It's the equivalent of "if you can't see my mirrors, I can't see you." They drive less than inches away from other cars. I'm told the rickshaw rides will be an adrenaline rush.

The other thing I noticed is how absolutely polluted it is here. Think of that great big fog cloud rolling into the SF area. Now add a bit of grey, add some eye, nose, lung burn and a bunch of trash all over the ground everywhere; and you've got New Delhi. The parts I've seen so far, at least. I don't think it's going to be cleaner anywhere else in this city though because I'm in the expensive, fancy part.

I also noticed the sheer amount of waiting there is everywhere. Everybody waits while a single person does their job. Like last night. The driver that picked me up, the bell person, and the security guard all stood right by me while we waited for the desk clerk to figure out that they were full and they didn't have a room for me. It was a bit strange to me.

Well, I'm off to explore now. I'm seeking some yummie Indian food.