Departing Delhi

Though I'm still not quite feeling perfect, I feel well enough to move on from Delhi and finally do some exploring of India, starting in Rajasthan. I'm kinda getting cabin fever here in Delhi, after seeing most of the major sites here these last few days.

I do appreciate the feedback and support I've gotten from folks. The concensus seems to be for making a go of it here, though a couple folks thought I should head to Thailand right away, and I got one semi-serious vote for just heading home now. :)

I also got some good advice for heading up to the hills and relaxing for a couple of weeks (better air, better food, less stress than Delhi). I may still do that, but I really want to catch a bit of the camel fair in Pushkar. I even got a couple of really generous offers to stay with folks in the area to recover a bit more, but I feel well enough that I can't really resist the urge to get on the road any longer.

After talking with various folks, including Jimmy and Jen (friends of Cary Roberts, who are living in India for a year on a Fulbright scholarship - see my link to their blog in an earlier post), I decided to hire a car and driver for a couple of weeks. This sounds really extravagant, but it's actually pretty cheap around here, and it's pretty much required to see much of Rajasthan. This plus decent budget hotels will cost me less than just my 1-star hotel here in Delhi is costing, and in theory I'll still have a lot of flexibility about where to go.

The hard part here is finding a travel agent you can trust. I'm still a little nervous about that part, but this one came recommended by several sources, including a businessman I ran into here who claims to have a 20-year contract to supply all of Lee's jeans, as well as a good chunk of the cotton clothes at Macy's. He seemed legit, anyway, and even tried to buy me lunch (not the treatment I get from the scammers who sit down next to me at breakfast every morning and try to be my friend, then lead me to a "special" travel agent). The price also seemed to be in the range of what others have been able to get, and the agent's desperate to sell me on similar deals for my subsequent weeks here (which I'm unlikely to do, but he doesn't know that), so I think it'll work out.

The travel agent even asked, "Why are you Americans so untrusting?"

"Maybe it's because I've gotten at least somewhat screwed by almost every single person I've met here," I responded.

Yes, there are many more stories here, most of which are no longer painful, including Ivan the Roman Catholic fireman, which I'll share if I get too much time in a net cafe again! Yesterday I had to bail on 4 different cabbies to get one that wasn't trying to pull multiple scams on me (besides just overcharging), just to get back from the National Museum. On one level, it's kind of an interesting game, but at the same time, you start to assume every single person is trying to scam you somehow. I know they're not all out to get me, but I find it hard to trust people until they've really earned my trust.

My gut feeling is I'll probably stay in India another 3 weeks or so, heading to Thailand a week or so earlier than my original plan. However, if I really have a blast these next two weeks, I may stick around a bit longer.

So, I'm off tomorrow for a day at the Taj Mahal in Agra, a couple hour drive from here, before heading to Rajasthan. I'm not sure if I'll be able to find net cafes with CDs along the way (they seem to be quite rare, and I've not been anywhere I can plugin since Taipei), so it may be a while before I'm able to share any pics. At least I should finally have some worth sharing after these next two weeks, and if nothing else, I may be able to mooch Internet access off of Cary's friends at some point.