It's approaching midnight on June 15. I'm in Hyderabad airport, feeling ragged after an 18 hour haul over 2 legs, and I am totally unprepared for what's about to hit me.
By my side is my good friend Lisa*. For the last 6 months, I've been saving my pennies for an epic overland jaunt from India to Germany, passing through such well-trodden tourist hotspots as Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. Lisa will be joining me for the Indian leg of the journey, before flying away to London to start a new life for herself. At least that's the plan, but anyone who's ever travelled for more than a couple of weeks knows that plans are about as useful as air conditioning on a motorcycle.
By the time we're done with the airport formalities, visas stamped in our passports and ready to make our way to our hotel, it's pushing 1am. We step out of the terminal and into... Mayhem.
This. Is. India. It's hot. It's humid. It's loud. It's filthy. And it's intoxicating. At least for me it is.
This is probably a good time to point out that my travel buddy is very much a travel virgin. As a teenager, she did a 3 month language exchange in France (she speaks fluent French), and has otherwise spent her entire life in the comfortable embrace of her native Melbourne. Oh yeah, she suffers from anxiety too.
If bringing an inexperienced young Australian girl with anxiety to India sounds like a terrible idea to you, well, you're right. Read on and see just how bloody right you are.
In the wee hours of the morning, there's no bus to take us to our hotel. Our only option is a cab. I'm not stoked about this, because I know what airports in developing countries are like. When Obi-Wan Kenobi says to Luke Skywalker “You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”, he betrays the fact that he's never been in an airport taxi rank after public transport has shut down for the night.
After running the gauntlet of 200 drivers shouting “Taxi? Taxi?” at us (a practice which will infuriate me more than once during my time in India), I stop and talk to one, but I can't get him lower than 1200 rupees. Sigh. There's a reason why the cheapest flights arrive at the most unsociable times, after all.
The driver leads us to a not very old, but very beaten up Suzuki Swift. This is the part where a writer would usually serve up a cheap platitude about “buckling down for a wild ride”, but... there's no seatbelts.
It quickly becomes very apparent why this car has had more hits than Shirley Bassey. The driver is an utter maniac, swerving and lanesplitting at twice the speed limit as if he were riding a superbike. He does well to not take out a motorcyclist at one point. He also spends the entire trip steering with one hand and tooting the horn with the other, something that I quickly realise is a very annoying and pointless cultural norm here in India.
I'm actually having a blast, grinning from ear to ear, watching the driver squeeze through implausibly tight gaps as crumbling buildings fly past us on either side. I've seen these kinds of scenes in places like Morocco; less intense than India, which turns everything up to 11, but the same general concept. I look over at Lisa. She is not quite having a blast.
“I don't wanna die in a motor vehicle accident before I even get to see India!”
“Just relax,” I try to reassure her. “This is normal life here.”
My well-meaning words do not have the desired effect.
I've given the driver the name and the address of our hotel, but it doesn't count for much, since he seems to have no idea where he's going. Water off a duck's back to me. To my anxious young friend, not so much. Again, I try reassuring her with experience. “The first day in a country is always the toughest.”
Somewhere in the vast, featureless expanse of Hyderabad city, the driver stops and converses in an animated fashion with a rickshaw driver. I'm not sure what language they're speaking, as India doesn't have a universal national language. Hindi is spoken by about 70% of the population. English is spoken by about 15%. Each of the 32 states has their own indigenous language as well. In Hyderabad, that language is Telugu.
After a brief chat, the driver climbs back into his death trap and does a U-turn. More horn-honking. More lanesplitting. Cows, fallen powerlines, half-finished buildings. Hyderabad is mental, and by the look of things, it never sleeps. Eventually, he pulls down a dark street and to the front of the Hotel Three Castles Deluxe. And the front door is locked. Brilliant.
Photo credit: booking.com
Our driver starts banging on the roller door and shouting, and manages to wake one of the staff. It's been a few years since I've ventured outside of the western world, so I'd kind of forgotten that in most of the world, hotel staff generally tend to live in their workplaces. The driver refuses to leave without receiving a tip, so I give him another 100 rupees to send him on his way.
Hotel Three Castles Deluxe was the cheapest place I could find on booking.com before arriving in India, and it shows. It's dingy as hell, and it feels like it could collapse at any moment. I fill in the guest register, an ancient book that looks like it would crumble to dust if you lifted it from the desk, and the still half-asleep receptionist leads us to our room.
It stinks. Like a combination of dusty construction site, piss, and week-old dishwater. The bathroom is full of rust and mould. The soundtrack of horn-honking fills the room. And it's a double bed.
“Uh, we need a room with split beds, please.”
“I'm sorry sir, this is the only type of room we have.”
“But, on the website I booked a room with... Ah fuck it. Never mind.”
“Goodnight sir.”
The moment the door clicks shut behind us, Lisa bursts into tears.
“I can't do this!”
“Hang on. Hold up. Wait a minute. I told you the first day in a country is always the toughest. We're both tired. Let's just sleep it off and approach tomorrow with a fresh attitude.”
“Seriously, I'm not ready for this. And I definitely won't be sleeping tonight.”
As much as I want to reassure my friend, I've never seen her this far out of her element before, and I'm certainly no counsellor. I need a cigarette. I disappear down the corridor and open up a window looking down onto the chaos below. Even at 2am, this unremarkable, featureless street somewhere in Hyderabad makes Times Square look positively serene.
When I return to the room, Lisa tells me “I've booked a flight to London for tomorrow.”
Well, shit.
After a largely sleepless night, we check out in the morning and wander out into the heat and the chaos. I've never seen Lisa, normally so brash and full of bravado, look so timid. A food vendor waves down a rickshaw for us. The driver takes us as far as the freeway for 100 rupees, at which point we do a super sketchy dash across 4 lanes of speeding traffic to get to a taxi who will take us to the airport for another 150.
The street outside the hotel. Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons
I spend most of the day at the airport with Lisa, making sure she gets away safely and without too much angst. As day turns to night and she boards her flight, I sojourn back into town, feeling a little dejected. Day one has absolutely not gone how I would have liked it to. But there's also a sense of relief. On a long term world trip, riding solo is the best way to go. It's possibly the greatest expression of freedom, and now I only need to concern myself with my own wellbeing, not anyone else's. The world is at my feet, and epic adventures await.
Stay tuned for the next instalment, where I have a strange brush with the law in Hyderabad, find myself sharing space with monkeys in a mystical oasis in India's south, and discover that the colour of my skin makes me the tourist attraction.
*Lisa's name has been changed.
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If you missed my intro post, you can read it here.
The next instalment of my India to Germany overland backpacking travelogue is now available here.
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Have you ever visited India? What was your first impression when you arrived? Were you amazed? Dazzled? Nervous? Excited? Disappointed? I want to hear about your experiences in the comments!
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