Day 1- Home
As soon as I walked into the lobby, the bags I’ve hauled across the globe are snatched away from me by the bell staff, to be taken the final 2 minutes of their journey by someone else. I prefer carrying my own luggage, but apparently I’m not going to be able to do very much for myself while I’m here, when there are several people eagerly waiting to do them for me. After checking in, I was told my luggage would be along shortly, so I went in search of my room.

The suite was completely dark when I walked in, so I searched along the wall for a light switch. I found one after walking around a corner, but flipping it did no good. I saw the outline of some floor and table lamps in the dark, but to my increasing frustration I found that none of those would turn on either. I fumbled around in the dark for at least five minutes, with only the light from the outside hallway to provide the narrowest of illumination. I gave up and went into the hallway to wait on my luggage, and to find out why I’m in a suite with no electricity.

I found it a little annoying that I had to give up my luggage at check-in and then wait for it, especially at such a late/early/whatever the heck it is back home hour of the day/night. Three in the morning here, about 5:30 in the afternoon back in Atlanta, so I’m caught somewhere in between. A hotel worker arrived to find me still stumbling around, took my key card and placed it into a slot in the interior hallway next to the front door, and the room lights up.

My suite, like much of the hotel, is mostly done in black marble and wood. Everything else is beige. The walls of the bathroom consist entirely of reflective black marble and mirrors- which will hopefully serve as motivation to go to the fitness center every day. There’s also a living room with a couch and television I probably won’t watch, and a mini-bar to tease me with $10 beers. After contemplating the contents of the fridge for a solid minute, I closed it without taking anything, for fear of setting an expensive precedence for the rest of my trip.

Past the sliding glass doors is the king-sized bed. I decided the best thing to do was to jump in and try to sleep, and rid myself of the biggest jet lag I’ve ever had.

Day 1
As I exit the plane at Indira Ghandi International Airport, a couple of initial words to describe Delhi hit me: Dusty, Disorienting. To be fair, it’s going to be hard to gain your bearings in a new time zone at 3 AM when it’s 4:30 PM in the time zone you’re used to. As I walk down the exit ramp from the plane, I find myself in a white fog of dust that doesn’t lift even indoors in the terminal. As confusing as I find things in the airport, one word I can’t use here is Disorganized. There seems to be as many workers in the airport as there are travelers passing through, and for each job in the US that would occupy one person, here in India there are at least three people to do it. At the baggage claim there is one person who removes the business class luggage from the conveyer, who hands it to a second person who places it on the ground. A third person straightens the suitcases into orderly rows. There are another two men hovering about, assisting them. What struck me as funny was that they were all standing within 5 feet of each other; an initial glimpse into job creationism in India, where the population exceeds opportunities and so processes are designed to be labor-intensive. Despite the 5 people we have to offload our luggage, I still find myself waiting on my own, despite the Priority tag which had been affixed to it. Unbeknownst to me, Bryan snapped this picture of me in what I’m told is my impatient stance- a position I’ll be standing in all too often if I don’t learn to relax while I’m here.

That leaves- disorienting. I found my driver with my name on a placard (not as exciting at 2:30 AM as I had hoped the experience would be), and he led me to my car. I rode though a maze of three story concrete buildings- all shuttered shops with dark apartments overhead, with no visible landmarks with which to orient myself. After an unknown number of minutes my building appeared like a barge in the fog; the illuminated "The Grand" sign barely cutting through the haze.

I signed for my cab, and stepped out into my new home.