One week in Delhi: First impressions.

When arriving in Delhi tired and hungry just off the plane from Australia, the first thing that I noticed was the smell of smoke. It wasn’t the familiar smell of wood fires but rather something new and foreign. The smoky odour didn’t immediately strike me as unpleasant it was just unknown. At first I thought that it was stale cigarette smoke from the indoor smoking rooms within the airport however, once outside, it became evident that it was ever precent. It was the smell of the home fires of the 20 million people that live in and around the city. It was a foreign smell because it was not wood that was being burned. In a climate wood is in short supply the most common form of fuel is dried cow manure a readily available resource. I am told that it is a smell that is present all year round. It is the smell of Delhi.

When walking around the streets the scent smoke and a general smell of rubbish and decay are quite often over powered by more pleasant odours. The smell of spices and cooking (both curries and sweets) aand incense and Chai tea seem to reach out and welcome you to Delhi and India with open arms. The pleasant smells and the worm sweet taste of Chai draws you away from the dirtiness and hustle and bustle of the street and allows you to relax and indulge in a moment of peace before once again stepping out into disarray, and being a tourist not yet attuned to the rules of life in India, stepping out into uncertainty.

Delhi seems to always be busy and in a perpetual state of chaos. When driving from the airport, after arriving at 3.30 in the morning, the well-known rules and relative order of Melbourne driving to were nowhere in sight. Being a passenger on the Delhi roads was an intense experience. Everyone uses the road with whatever means of transport available. In a country that has a large poor population this means that on the roads are many bicycles, and horse or buffalo drawn carts. There are trucks and busses, motorbikes, scooters, rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, and any other form of transport that has wheels or hooves or moves in some way. One of the first things that become immediately obvious is that you have to give way to people coming on to a roundabout and not the other way around. Doing a left hand turn from a right hand lane, even if you have to cross three lanes of heavy traffic, is not only acceptable but accomplish by all forms of transport no matter how fast or slow. No one pays any attention to the lanes that are marked on the road with everyone meandering through the traffic in a frantic effort to find the fastest rout home. At night when the traffic is slower red traffic lights no longer indicate “stop” but rather they are more of a “give way” signal. It was a lot to digest so early in the morning.

Amongst all the chaos of the roads there are further obstacles through which the drivers have to navigate. Appallingly maintained roads are a problem common through most of the parts of India that I have seen, however in Delhi it is only the occasional large pothole. The most common obstacles are the previously mentioned turning from the right hand lane. It is not uncommon to see random animals sitting in the road (these are quite often cows who seem right at home in the middle of the road) and pedestrians who don’t see a six-lane motorway as an obstruction to their journey. I don’t think that I saw anybody use a pedestrian crossing.

Amongst all this chaos the greatest tool of communication on the road is quite obviously the horn. To the untrained observer there appears to have evolved horn etiquette and even rules. There is the polite short honk that gives slower drivers a chance to move out of the way. This honk is the most common and is habitually utilized. Two short honks are used to convey a certain amount of annoyance that the slower driver didn’t move out of the way quick enough. After the two short honks it is the long honk that is employed with great force to broadcast anger and severe annoyance at stupid or carless driving decisions. Within these three systems there are many variations on the theme adding noisy to an already exhilarating journey. If travelling in an auto-rickshaw the sound of the road is increased exponentially due to the fact that you are in an open vehicle.

Driving in Delhi was described to me as being part of a large school of fish. Everyone is weaving in and out of the traffic all going in the same direction as part of one giant organism. After my initial shock of the first day I began to see that there was a technique to driving on the Delhi roads. Drivers seemed have a great sense of spatial awareness. Once you get into the new motoring headspace and forget all that you have previously learned about driving, the journey becomes alright and almost normal. New Delhi lulled me into a state of acceptance when travelling and allowed me to concentrate on the other unfamiliar life rules of life in India. I saw how the system worked and I was at ease as a passenger for I fully trusted the driver. This was all to change. The sub-continent has a way of obliterating all preformed ideas and notions and hastily learned rules of life. As a tourist you are forever challenged and put to the test. This is the magic of India.