More to the point, I (still Dan) just got back from a trip to Northern India to pay a visit to the Great Himalayan Mountains. I, with Ruby, left Thailand on a nearly empty airplane bound for Colombo connecting to Delhi. After two uneventful flights we arrived in Delhi for our one night stay before departing to the Himalayas. Let me preface this story with one comment on Delhi; if there is a Hell and it happens to exist on Earth, I found it, and it's Delhi. Look no further. That being said, we got off our plane around 11 pm and wanted to go to Paraganj (a district in Delhi) to find a place to stay for the night before departing for Manali the next day. We got a ticket from the prepaid taxi stand and were immediately whisked by some impish Indians to their taxi which we were under the impression would take us where we wanted to go. Wrong. We were driven around the God forsaken city, being told that Paraganj was flooded, burned down, and collapsing into riots, all of which we feverently denied and practically begged to be taken to our destination. After much time wasted we were taken to a dimly lit and smoky "Tourist Information" shop. There we were lied to about our travel plans, told that the road to Manali was washed out and we would never make it. When we said we didn't care and would like to try anyway, we called "bus companies" (I placed bus companies in quotes because I'm sure it was the owner's friends) who all told us they were booked full. We turned down every offer they placed forth for us as they chain smoked cigarettes, literally end to end. Eventually we continued on our way with the same cab driver, who again refused to take us to our destination and instead took us to a hotel of his choosing, the whole while telling me that I was a "bad man" and that "I didn't care about [Ruby's] safety" and that "I wasn't [Ruby's] friend." We, for lack of any other possible options, stayed in this overpriced room and decided to regroup in the morning and try to continue from there.
The following day we had various similar experiences with auto-rickshaws eventually landing us to continue on foot for fear of being just driven around and lied to. We finally, after much heartache, made it to a true government tourist information office and were directed to a reputable location to buy a bus ticket to Manali. We bought our tickets and the bus left that evening, around 5 pm, and it was presently 11 am. We decided to go somewhere and sit with no destination, and just blow off time until our bus left. We found a grassy knoll and defended it from people trying to sell us things from shoe repair to ear cleaning. Eventually we returned to the location where our bus was supposed to arrive and we met two French Canadians who were headed to Manali as well. Buses started arriving and we, along with the French Canadians, ran around checking each bus and none of them were ours. Eventually we found our bus, getting a parking ticket, and successfully boarded our bus.
We felt we were on our way, shockingly still on our original schedule, when we felt the desparate hands of Lucifer make one last grab from Delhi. Our bus got in an accident. It hit a truck that cut us off and the truck took off into the night. The spare driver, who was in the luggage compartment for lack of seats on the bus, jumped out babbling frantic Hindi and flagged down a passing motorcycle and took after the truck. After an hour and a half on the side of the road with Indian police he returned without the truck and we reluctantly left. This time truly on our way, cursing Delhi and praying the rest of our trip would go better than the first 18 hours.
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