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60 km outside Delhi, we became embroiled in the first of many traffic jams to come. I almost clipped a bus with the trailer, only to snap my head forward in time to swerve around another bus turning straight into me. Traffic piled up behind slow bullock and pony carts. Cycle rickshaws, motor scooters and cyclists dodged in and out of of the slower vehicles. Buses relentlessly blasted everyone with their horns. Vehicles always charged up behind me when I tried to get around bullock carts.

After a day of hard biking and constant direction-asking, we arrived where we wanted to at 6:00pm. It had been a long day, but little did we know it was only 2/3 done.

We couldn’t find a decent place to stay. According to our custom, we left one person with the bikes and sent two out to look for places. Several times they came back empty handed.

I argued for going to the train station. Pete was against, but Drew sided with me. We mounted the bikes and headed towards the train station, which was only a couple kilometers away.

One hour later, we had gone 1 kilometer. Traffic leading to the train station was hopelessly backed up. It moved at a snail’s pace. Cars, buses, carts, cycle rickshaws and motor bikes all moved in spurts and stops. Tempers shortened and drivers smashed into each other’s bumpers rather than leave space for anyone to get ahead.

“This is hell,” said the usually indefatigable optimist Pete. We put our cycles onto the sidewalk and rolled past the honking mass of jumbled traffic, but to cross the road we had to jump back in.

Finally we made it past the train station and our lane opened up. We proceeded to race to the international youth hostel, so eager to be out of the area we didn’t even stop at the grungy hotels that finally emerged by the side of the road.

We couldn’t race for long, though. We didn’t know where we were going. We stopped again and again to ask for directions. The Delhi Police force became our god-sent guides. One officer spit on the ground and shoved his machine gun underneath his arm. “Straight,” he said pointing, “then right at round about, then you ask again, ok?”

Half an hour to midnight, we finally arrived at the hostel. The silence of the embassy area of New Delhi made for an eerie but welcome change. There was no food. We registered and had our emergency food cold and dry: ramen noodles meant to be consumed when we were stuck in the wilderness with no restaurants. Wilderness or not, we were happy to be finally arrived. We all slept well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 5:21 am and is filed under Jim's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.