Hannah: Detour
As our time in India comes to a close, we are forced to acknowledge that this will probably be the last time (at least for a while) that we experience many of the things we've been experiencing the past couple of days. While things like eating my last thali may have felt bitter sweet, my last completely unnecessary, hour-long detour felt less bitter sweet and more like a pain in the ass that made me feel slightly less sad about leaving India. For my last village voice from India, I will recount the story of this ridiculous detour to you all.
After an afternoon of some random, last minute shopping, Knight, Katie, Caitlin and I had arranged to meet at 6:45 to take a rikshaw to our hotel so we could be back by 7, the time the leaders had arranged for the group to meet and then go out to dinner. Seeing as how the 4 of us had somehow neglected to establish a meeting place, I was quite lucky to happen to find Knight in one of the shops at this time; neither of us had any idea where Katie and/or Caitlin were. When it became 6:50, we decided that Katie and Caitlin could get back by themselves, so we stopped looking for them and started worrying more about getting ourselves back.
At this point, it became apparent that neither of us had a card for our hotel. This shouldn't have been a big problem, because we knew the name of our hotel, which allowed us at least for a couple of minutes to walk around asking random rikshaw wallas if they knew where this hotel was and having them either respond in the negative or not respond at all and drive away. When enough time had passed for us to qualify as definitely going to be late, we decided to call Erin, to 1) get the address of our hotel and 2) let her know we would be late. This involved finding a phone booth.
Finding a phone booth involved walking around some more asking random Indians if they could direct us to a phone booth and having them respond that they didn't know where one was and then try to sell us things (that had actually been going on the whole time). Finally, a nice police officer got rid of some of the merchants for us and then directed us to a phone booth. This particular STD (they call phone booths STD's here, don't ask me why) had 3 phones: 2 that didn't work and one that sort of did. We of course got to the one that worked last; Knight dialed Erin's number, and I then did my best to take down the address of the hotel from her. The quality of the reception was such that I was forced to ask Erin to repeat herself several times and was still left unsure of whether or not I had the right thing written down. As it would turn out, I had made a crucial mistake in the address (I had an 8 instead of an A), but this would not become apparent until much later. To make up for a potential mistake like this, we also had the name of a movie theatre that was supposedly pretty close to our hotel and also the name of the restaurant the group was going to in case we were so late that we would just have to meet them there.
Seeing as how the address I had wasn't totally correct, it now occurs to me that any rikshaw walla who would have told us he knew where this place was must have been lying, since the place I wrote down doesn't entirely exist. Most were kind enough to be honest that they didn't know, but one finally told us he knew where the restaurant was. We got into the rikshaw after some bargaining, drove around for a few minutes, and then stopped outside of a complex. He wouldn't take us inside the complex, because it was "not possible"- this is a clear indication that they're scamming you, especially considering there were quite a few other rikshaws inside the complex. We got out and walked around for a while asking people where this restaurant was. It turns out he took us to a complex that contained a south Indian restaurant, but not the one we were looking for at all. So we got into another rikshaw and drove around for a few minutes before running out of gas- we didn't pay him. Then we asked a ton more rikshaw wallas, one of whom turned the piece of paper I had the address written on upside down, clearly indicating he couldn't read English thus making it obvious that he was lying when we said he knew this place. We finally found one nice enough to admit that he didn't know where it was but take us in his rikshaw and drive us around anyway.
Knight and I were in this last rikshaw for maybe half an hour driving past things we'd never seen before, discussing the very real possibility that this was all an elaborate dream. The rikshaw walla stopped maybe 10 or 15 times along the way to check the address on the piece of paper and also to ask random people on the street if they knew where we were going. Somehow, we magically ended up kind of near where we were supposed to be, near enough that one of the random people who was asked where our hotel was knew enough to point out that it was probably "A" and not "8." You might think this helped us out more than it really did- we still couldn't find the hotel. At this point, we shouldn't have gone to the hotel anyway, because everyone would obviously be at the restaurant. It was 8:00, an hour past our meeting time. So finally, someone else told us where this restaurant was, and we got to the restaurant. Quite apart from being understandably pissed at our hour-late arrival, the entire group was kind enough to sing happy birthday to us the minute we finally stepped into the restaurant, despite the fact that it wasn't even any of our birthdays. I love our group. And I love India, even when it makes me an hour late for something.
Hannah