Incredible India ??

During the first day or two in India my thoughts were mostly preoppupied with "What have I let myself in for !?" In fact, over the next month and a half, and 4800 kilometres, this often popped into my head. Little was I to know that what I had let myself in for was a roller coaster ride of emotions ranging from shock to love to JUST GET ME OUTA HERE!! and finally back to love again....

As we flew over Mumbai, out my tiny cabin window, I caught my first glimpse of India - hundreds and thousands of shanti houses and slums
sprawled as far as I could see and more. It was a scene from a travel documentary tv show, but this time real.... devestating, filthy and incredibly real. Everything I seen and read about this mysterious country was suddenly there in front of me and a lot worse. And yet, as I looked more closely, I was sure I could see respect amongst the tumbling corrugated iron and pride in the people of the small alleyways, cows and shit. Or maybe it was just me hoping that this was true, how am I to know what it's really like? It was the first one of those what have I let myself in for? moments and it stunned me to silence.
We were greeted, as we got off the plane, by a moustacheiod Indian Arny officer, with his dusty brown uniform and big black machine gun. And later as we stepped over what looked like a dried up pool of blood on the airport floor, beneath a huge sign advertising "Incredible India!", I couldn't help but think to myself just act like we've done nothing wrong, coz we have done nothing wrong, and we'll be ok in that panicky nervous sorta way.

Getting a taxi to our hotel was easier than I had expected after all the horror stories I had heard. After a lot of handing our precious taxi slip to one person, who handed to another and another, only to have it checked again by a further officer, we were finally on our way, picking up and dropping off a few of the drivers friends along the way. The journey was one of those I suppose anyone experiences when they go to a country where the rules of the road are thrown out the window and run over by a rusty rickshaw. We hurtled through dirty streets, tooted behing stubborn cows, watched a line of men piss against a wall and then continue on their way holding hands, answered the "Horn Please" sign on the back of trucks overlaoded with people and luggage, passed whole families living under plastic sheets next to rubbish piles and drove underneath huge 'Orange' signs (which seemed totally inappropriate in an area where it was obvious most of it's inhabitatants couldn't afford food never mind mobile phones). It was ride full of things I had never seen before and of things I didn't even know existed. The kind of ride which pumped adreniline into my veins and tears into my eyes - a young man who's yellow eyes looked as old as India, tapped on our window with a stained bloody bandage and a rusty tin box and all I could do was look away and say no. In my memories he is 'the tin man' and if I could relive that day I would wind down that window and give him all I had.