A couple of you have asked ... after my Glimpses post ... what it was like the first few days here in Delhi.I'll try my best to recreate, remember and recount, but I truly was in a fog that first week. If I'm honest, I still may very well be in one to this day!
We arrived at 10:00 pm on a Friday night in Delhi. The INSTANT the forward cabin doors were opened, I remember feeling a swoosh of heat. Hot, sticky, oppressive heat. It didn't matter though, because we were quite tired of the stale air, that had been forced and recirculated through the vents in the airplane for the past 12 hours.
We gathered up our things, said goodbye to the wonderful flight attendants and set on our way to find Todd.
We followed the crowd to where we assumed we needed to go. Down the escalators ... this tired and ragged bunch of travelers ... to the first checkpoint. Health screening. Due to H1N1, we were all required to state our originating airport, answer whether we'd been sick, and then "pass" the heat sensors that were scanning our bodies for high temperatures.
Next stop to be formally admitted into the country. We made our way - rather quickly - to the line for foreigners. Because of our seating class on the airplane, we beat most of the traffic to this point in our journey and I was excited to be at the front of the line.
Our visas were checked. Our passports looked over. Our visas were checked. Our passports looked over. Our passports looked over. Our visas were checked.
[No, I am not stuttering ... it felt like T-H-E longest passport check in history (and I've done a few). Here, I had 3 owly kids who just wanted to see their dad, and a mom who was plain tuckered out ... and the passport agent (is that what he's called?) kept flipping the pages of our passports ... back and forth // forth and back ... as if magically a golden coin or a Willy Wonka Chocolate Bar was going to leap from those pages.]
When he finally deemed us approved to cross over that yellow line, I felt relief. We'd done it. We'd arrived. That was all I'd set out to do when we first boarded the plane over 24 hours prior, was simply get from Point A to Point B .. and we succeeded.
No more than 5 steps away was Todd. We were both overcome with a myriad of emotions, neither one of us are too sure which were the most prevalant, only that the sigh we both let out most likely echoed in the Delhi airport that night. Tony ran into his dad's arms and Mia cried, probably from sheer exhaustion. Terran just shook his dad's hand and they awkwardly did "the man pat."
Because he knew we were tired, Todd showed us (along with the help of a man from his office) to the baggage claim. There we played catch up and I sent messages of "we've arrived" on my new 'mobile' to friends/family back home.
Once our baggage arrived (a long and painful process, but I don't want to bore you with the details of waiting for our 8 huge suitcases), we walked through customs (an easy process) and outside to our first glimpse of Delhi.
The smell of India hit me SQUARE in the face. I can't describe it, and I so wish that I could. It is something that seems to have permanently engrained itself in both nostrils and I wish that I could have bottled the outside air that I'm used to for those days that I just need a bit of what I was formerly accustomed to.
The smell of India (as I affectionally call it) is a strange combination of heat, diesel, cardammom, heat, sweat, trash, more heat, humidity, incense and what else, I'm not quite sure. The smell of India collides almost violently with the sound of India. The horns, the sound of diesel vehicles which is not the quiet pur of an engine you might be used to back in the States, the yelling, the horns and more horns.
The kids and I just stood there with wide eyes, as we were ushered to the waiting cars and drivers.
Wide eyes, but open hearts.
We spent the next hour in the car, as we made our way from the airport to our new home. When we pulled up to our street, we saw the guards leap to attend to our bags, Rosy our cook, came to the door straight away and welcomed us. Todd had filled the house with flowers for me, and two people were ready to give us all massages. There were "Welcome to India" cakes and wine. Yes, there was wine.
My first night in Delhi is one that marked the end of one chapter in my life and the beginning of the next.
[The next week or so proved a battle of beating the jetlag monster, but once that was over, we hit the ground running!]
