On arrival

I arrived in Delhi on June 1st at 7 am after 36 hours of very stressful travel. I bought the most complicated plane ticket possible: Boston-NY-Mexico City-Atlanta-Newark-Munich-Delhi, and was completely exhausted. After missing 2 flights, changing 2 others and being delayed because the plane's bathroom would not flush, my suitcase did not arrive. Perfect. But I was so excited about finally being in India, I did not care much.

After patiently waiting in line to file a report (there were many passengers in my situation, including a group of very shady middle-aged Italians) I realized that the concept of standing in line in India is very diffuse: people will sort of stand around, not really in line, and will get in front of you if they can. I took a deep breath and decided I did not have the energy to fight. I would patiently wait.

After an hour, I left the airport and took a cab to my friend's aunt's house in Saket (South Delhi). The traffic in Delhi outdoes its reputation, so all I saw were cars, motorbikes, metro walls, honking, rickshaws, more honking and all I wanted was to arrive. I clearly had no idea where I was going, so I kept trying to make sense of the roads and signs I saw; but since they are building the subway to the airport half the roads were blocked and all of them have walls to guard the construction, and I couldn't see anything (and not that it would have helped much, anyway).

Finally, after many u-turns and asking around (Saket can be a complicated neighborhood), I arrived at M-9 2nd floor, where I was warmly greeted by Ms. Veena Bhandari and her husband. After all the commotion of exams, going to Mexico for 3 days and a very long trip, all I could do was sleep. And sleep I did.