Around the World: Welcome to Cairo

February 21, 1992

I discovered the airport coach to Delhi International Airport.  While I am waiting for the bus to arrive, I hear the same familiar voice that has become a stay of comic relief through my last days in India.

"Can you spare 5 rupees?"  I don't know what this guy's purpose in India is, but he always seems to appear when my last bit of patience is teetering on the edge of the shredder.  In a few hours, I'll have no use for Indian rupees and to be honest, I kind of admire his persistence.

"Here," I say, handing him a 20 rupee bill, "It's all I have left."  He thanks me with a blessing of peace and safe travels before leaving.  In a way, he is India anthropomorphized.  Brightly coloured, distracting, respectful, unrelenting, sincere, annoying, introspective, unpredictable, benevolent, bizarre, and for the most part, harmless.

Shortly after the bus was loaded and driving toward the airport, I look out the window to see Delhi and India for the last time and find the bus is being followed by naked man riding a large white horse.  What strikes me as odd is the fact that I don't find this spectacle at all strange.  This is India.  Strange is what she does best, and she does it very well.

The public area of the airport has the typical covering of perma-grime on everything.  It doesn't matter how often surfaces are treated with soapy water, they remain permanently dirty.  Much like the state I am in currently.  I wonder if I'll ever be clean again.  Nothing to do but try to stay awake until 3:30 am, when I can check in.

Once through security, the condition of the airport changes dramatically.  Surfaces are sparkling and reflective.  After scrubbing my hands to a tolerable state of sanitary, I bought a samosa and the largest coffee I could find.  I sat down on a very comfortable padded bench to eat my snack, and promptly fell asleep.

I am stirred into a disoriented state of consciousness by a sari-clad airport employee shaking my shoulder, calling me by name.  When I acknowledge that she has indeed found who she was looking for, she says in a panicked tone, "You're flight is leaving!"

Now I remember what I was doing!  I grab my bag and run after the woman.  She hurries me through security and to the plane.  Despite my late arrival, the stewardesses are exceptionally kind to me.  In Muscat, Oman, the passengers are led down a portable staircase, across the taxiway and up another staircase to another plane bound for Bahrain.  I got to see the inside of the airport in Bahrain before boarding the flight to Cairo.

Whew!

While in the queue for immigration, I am told I need a Visa to enter Egypt by a plain clothed man approaching various people in line.  He asks for $15USD and hands me a red postage-type stamp to put in my passport.  The immigration official stamps it and welcomes me to Egypt.  Outside the airport, I find a taxi and ask the driver if he knows where the New Moon Hotel is.

"Oh yes, I know it well." I said a little prayer, and got in the car. 

The driving is very civilized, and true to his word, the driver knew exactly where he was going.  On arrival, the driver opens the door for me and helps me with my backpack to the lobby of the hotel.  When I complete the check in process, the hotel clerk asks me for my passport.  It is law, he explains, to register all tourists with the police.  It will be returned to me tomorrow morning.  Skeptical, I hand the clerk my passport.  I already have a photocopy in my money belt and the address of the Canadian Embassy, should it not be back in my hands tomorrow morning.

The hotel clerk leads me to the elevator, the kind where you have to shut the door yourself and hold the button until you arrive.  Deja-vu.  This elevator is very familiar.

On the second floor, he shoves the elevator door open, revealing a dark hallway.  Only one light in the distance flickers with the intermittent buzz of flowing current.  This isn't going to end well.

He guides me down the hallway to my room.  Oh, no... oh good lord, no.  He opens the door.  I close my eyes, expecting the disappointing sight of a concrete slab, covered by a thin white mattress.  Bravely, I peek out of one eye.  Inside, it's dark.

The urge to turn and run is overwhelming, but I muster up enough bravery to actually see the room before I panic. This is so much like Bombay.  Too much like Bombay.  Please don't let anything scatter, wriggle or move when...

... the light turns on.

I gasp so loudly, it startles the clerk.  "Is everything okay?"  He doesn't realize that this room is the equivalent of paradise.

The room is huge!  Tastefully decorated like grandmother's bedroom.  The queen-size beds require a running leap to get into!  The clerk pulls back the curtain to reveal french doors that lead to a balcony, overlooking a sun drenched, city view of Cairo.

The room is absolutely perfect, but what I want most of all is in the bathroom.  The massive shower is well stocked with towels.  The second the hotel clerk leaves the room, I turn on the shower and step into the stall, fully clothed.  Wonderful, blistering hot water falls from the over-sized shower head.  The water going down the drain is black.

Happiness consumes me and I cannot control the overwhelming urge to sing.

• ¤ •

"I'm singin' in the rain, 

Just singin' in the rain,
What a glorious feeling, 

I'm happy again....
...I have a smile on my face.
I'll walk down the lane, 

With a happy refrain
Just singin', singin' in the rain."

~Singing In The Rain, lyrics by Arthur Freed

Around the World: Hangin' in Delhi

February 19, 1992

It's late in the morning and I am quite lost in the maze of Connaught Place searching for the Emirates Air office to pick up my ticket to Cairo.  Along the way, several men greet me with one word. "Change?"

"Change" is an invitation to visit a nearby shop where one can exchange traveler cheques or foreign cash into rupees for a better rate than the bank offers.  I was able to get 36 rupees for each $1USD in a shop that sold bags.  Last night, while gathered on the balcony back at Sunny's, my fellow backpackers held a contest.  The winner had the guidebook to India with the oldest publishing date.  Comparing information on places to stay, we remarked that this must be an easy book to republish, as only the prices differ from edition to edition.  We agree that although there is no shortage of people in Delhi talking about change, nothing in India actually changes.  It just gets more expensive.

Lost in the maze of Connaught Place, I hear a familiar voice.  "Can you spare 5 rupees?"  It's the same drug-dazed Westerner again.  Who is this guy and why is he following me?

Connaught Place is disorienting enough, without being on constant alert for the unwanted groping on my backside.  It quickly gets irritating, chasing and chastising ignorant men who sample what they have no business touching.  I finally find Emirates Air and pick up my ticket.  My flight departs at 6:45 am on the 21st for Cairo!

New Delhi

Delhi is almost pleasant and very modern.  New Delhi is full of skyscrapers and noticeably absent of cows.  There's a sense of order to some degree.  Snake charmers wait for curious tourists approach them, for example, and I've grown somewhat accustomed to the sensory assault of colour, smell, noise and dust.  I am working up the courage to have a cold shower in a dark stall on a chilly day.

Some of my hotel mates have invited me out for pizza.  On the way back to Sunny's, Marcus, from Germany brings us all to a place he discovered that sells ice cream.  Ice cream!  Along the way, several offers are declined to shine my converse and put soles on Marcus' sandals.

Old Delhi, is very much like the India I have come to expect.  Crowded, chaotic, cows.   After our ice cream treat, we head into the old part of Delhi for dinner.  I'm not really sure what I'm eating.  It includes rice, vegetables and some mysterious substance that might be meat.  The meal is served on a large leaf and eaten in traditional Indian form, scooping what I can hold between the digits of my right hand.  It is considered very rude and unclean to touch food with your left hand, as this appendage is used for post digestive activities.  The meal is followed by a cup of chai from a nearby street vendor.

Delhi's old city

Back at Sunny's, the grade on the balcony is gradually increasing.  Jorn, from Denmark and Sabina, from Switzerland have discovered a shop that sells chocolate and share a selection of small blocks of fudge with everyone.  Sabina mentions that she will be leaving for Cairo, arriving the day after I do and we are making plans to meet at a place called the New Moon Hotel.

The conversation turns to this morning's shower experience.  Icy cold water in a small dark closet.  Hopefully, either tomorrow's temperature or the water will be warmer.  Seems an awfully unpleasant experience, only to be covered in grimy dust immediately after.

• ¤ •

"Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind."

~Seneca

Around the World: Making Plans

February 18, 1992

When I finally emerged from my cardboard box this morning, it was after 8am. Most cities in India have their own unique night time sounds and Delhi is no different. Last night's noises included gun shots and general localized unrest. Sounds that aren't particularly comforting knowing that the thickness of about 50 sheets of paper are all that stands between me and the goings-on outside.

Connaught Place looks very organized on a map and appears quite orderly on arrival, but it's a veritable maze of office buildings and businesses. It's very easy to get disoriented, something the locals are well aware of. Tempting as it was to be charged a small fee to be willingly led astray, I declined several offers and managed to find Singapore Air's airline office.

Don't let the straight lines fool you. 

The clerk I spoke to gave me a quote of $1900 to reroute my ticket, all the reason I needed to look for an alternative. Next door is the office for Gulf Air. The clerk bobbled his head and refused to help me without proof of my non-existent husband's approval. Yet another reason why I feel the need to change my ticket.

By accident, I found myself across the street from Cathay Pacific's office. The very nice female clerk explained that she could change my flight, but if I went to Emirates Air, I would get a better price. She was right.

A departure from Delhi International Airport spares me the long and arduous journey by train back to Bombay.  My new travel plans include two brief airport transfers, one in Muscat, Oman and another in Bahrain... 

New travel arrangements.

...until I am greeted by the ancient Pyramids in Cairo, Egypt!

I am a whirled up bundle of bliss and joy.  Just when I think this day can't possibly get any better, across the street, tucked behind another building, is the sign for "Wimpy's".  Hell ya, I'm getting me a  B U R G E R!

In India, the cow is a sacred animal so I'm not completely discouraged when I see the menu is reworked to accommodate the absence of beef.  The order queue is kept orderly by metal rails so the masses cannot crowd the counter.  Employees are dressed in garish orange uniforms.  My burger is made from 100% lamb, on a white, squishy bun with all the trimmings, even wrapped in that plastic feeling paper.  Michael Jackson is blaring through the speaker system.  It's west as best as India can recreate it, in much the same way someone from China would appreciate the ambiance of Manchu-Wok.  With nothing but a window separating me and my lamburger from India, all of this is so very much like home and every bite is a little nibble of something wonderfully familiar.

Sniff!  Can I have fries with that?

• ¤ •

One's home is like a delicious piece of pie you order in a restaurant on a country road one cozy evening - the best piece of pie you have ever eaten in your life - and can never find again.

~Lemony Snicket