Day 48 - India day 1

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

We arrived in India right on time this morning. Customs in India is quite a bit more extensive than other countries that we’ve been to so far. At first they told us that we’re all going to have to carry our passports on us at all times while in India. Distributing 700 passports to students and hoping that they won’t lose it scared the crap out of our dean. If someone loses their passport they first need to get an OK that they can leave India from India customs, then they need to get an OK from Malaysia customs saying they can enter their country without a passport. So basically, if you lost your passport you’re going to have to stay in India and fly yourself to Malaysia to meet up with us. Thankfully, when we had our political briefing this morning they told us that we don’t need to bring out passports out at all. All we need is a copy of our passport, our ship ID card, our India arrival and departure cards, and a customs sheet saying what we will be bringing off the ship in India. There were then 2 security checkpoints that we had to go through every time we enter the port. First, there’s the gangway that’s always there, then there’s soldiers at the bottom of the stairs to the gangway that we have to show our ship ID card and arrival/departure cards, then we have to show the same thing to the soldiers at the entrance to the harbor. They’re very strict about this. If you lose any of those two things you’re not allowed to enter or leave Chennai. Also, before our ship cleared India customs officials came on the ship to check everyone’s passports, and then distribute the arrival/departure and customs sheets after they signed them off. This took about 2 hours more than other ports.
Once we she ship was cleared one of the girls that we were planning on going to Delhi with went ahead and started looking for tickets online. Originally, the plan was to just go to the airport and see what we could get, but she found some decently priced tickets for a plane leaving at 7pm tonight so we just booked them.

Since we weren’t going to waste any time at the airport we had some extra time to explore Chennai.

First I’m going to explain a little about how the traffic works in India. Simply put, it’s absolutely chaos. There’s a hierarchy on who has the most power on the roads that goes from biggest to smallest. So first it goes buses, then trucks, then SUV’s, then cars, then auto rickshaws, then motorcycles, then scooters, then bicycles. If vehicle wants to change lanes or something, as long as that vehicle is bigger than the ones around it, it won’t have a problem. There are two kinds of rickshaws, auto rickshaws and regular rickshaws. The regular ones are basically a bike with a trailer hitched to the back to carry people. They usually don’t fit more than 2 people. They have a tiny motor on it, probably the same as a small lawn mower or something. They don’t go fast at all. Rickshaws are small 3-wheeled vehicles. If you Google it I’m sure you’ll find a lot of pictures of them. Auto rickshaws can carry anywhere from 3-5 people, depending on the size of it. I’ve seen at least 10 people packed into one of them though, people hanging off of all sides. Auto rickshaws have a bigger motor and can go faster. I would say the speeds are comparable to a moped. Maybe a little slower. The smaller vehicles, so rickshaws and anything smaller have an advantage over other traffic when there’s a lot of traffic. I’m pretty sure while driving, everyone’s philosophy is that if you can squeeze in, then you might as well, no matter how close to the other vehicles you will be. They have lanes for the traffic, but nobody ever uses them even if there’s no other cars around so I’m not completely sure why they put them there. If it’s a four-lane road (2 lanes going each way) you’re going to have at least 3 lanes going and more likely 4. People honk here more than anywhere I’ve ever been. I understand the whole courtesy honk and all, but India brings it to a whole new level that shouldn’t have ever been reached. I’ve heard more honking in one day than I have in my entire life combined. And that’s no joke! I really don’t think that I would ever be able to drive anything in India. Any traffic laws seem to be more like guidelines to follow than laws.

So anyway, David and I got off the ship shortly after booking those tickets and picked up a rickshaw right outside the ship. When getting these things you have to be very specific about the price that you’re going to pay. They tell us that you should be able to go anywhere in the city and it should never cost more than 200-250 Rupees ($1USD = 40 India Rupees) on a rickshaw. Right as we were walking off the stairs we were approached by a rickshaw driver (one with a bike) and he told us 50 Rupees for the entire day. Sounded like a great deal to us so we took it. Shortly after we realized how slow it was, but didn’t say anything. This guy then dropped us off at ‘his brother’s’ auto rickshaw and he was going to take us around for the rest of the day. We never talked the price with this guy because we just figured that it was going to be the same price. After a few hours when we got back he tried making us pay 2000 Rupees for driving us around. There was no way we were going to pay that much, that’s ridiculous and we made sure he knew that. He then told us 600, and not knowing any better we paid him. It shouldn’t have cost more than 200 Rupees for the time that he took us around. So instead of paying $15usd we should have paid $5usd. It’s still not terrible though when you compare it to the price of a cab in Minneapolis.

So backing up a little bit to where he all took us. We told the guy that we just wanted to do some shopping and he could basically take us wherever. On the way to our first stop were able to see the 2nd largest beach in the world (Miami Beach is the largest). It was by far the largest beach that I’ve ever seen! When you don’t have a specific destination for the rickshaw or taxi to take you, they take you to their friends shops where they receive a little bit of the commission (this became evident very quickly). Also, if you tell them a specific destination, they will try to make a stop on the way somewhere where they’ll get some compensation for dropping you off there. You have to be very stern when they try to do this and not get out of the rickshaw until they bring you to where you initially intended. It gets annoying that every single taxi and rickshaw that we were in throughout our 5 day stay in India first tried taking us somewhere other than where we asked first. They’ll also change the price on you from the initial price that you agreed on. When they do this you just have to pay them what you originally agreed on and walk away.
After he took us to some shops and we were able to buy some souvenirs we headed back to the ship so we wouldn’t be late for our 7pm flight to Delhi. The 5 of us took a taxi to the Chennai airport around 4:30 so we would have plenty of time to check in and everything. Security at the airports are about the same as in the US. During our preports they made it sound like it was terrible, but really it wasn’t bad. All checked luggage goes through an x-ray and is checked in front of you. Once it’s been checked they put a little twist tie thing on it so the bag can’t be opened again until those are broken. Everyone gets a pat down from a guy dressed in army attire upon entering the terminal. There are a ton of restrictions for what you can and can’t bring on in a carry on, but they rarely check the carry on luggage. We flew on a low-cost airline called SpiceJet. Once again, we took buses from the small terminal to our plane. I guess it’s just like that in the rest of the world.

There were 6 other SAS people who were on our same flight that upon arrival in Delhi, they didn’t have any plans. So we have this group of 11 people sitting at the departure gate trying to figure out how and where we should get a hotel. One girl had a Lonely Planet book and found this place called Lords Hotel. The book said that it cost 250 Rupees a night and was located near the train station. First of all, anywhere that’s going to charge 250 Rupees (~6.25USD) can’t be that great but they insisted on going there since it was near the train station. We walked outside and got 3 taxi’s to take us there. They all said they knew where it was at and could get us there no problem, but we soon realized that was just a lie. The 3 taxi’s split up pretty much right away on their way to this place. We realized after getting into the car that our driver was no older than 16 years old and the speedometer didn’t work. He was easily the craziest driver that I’ve ever seen. It literally felt like I was in a video game, and not in a good way. He was clearly going faster than everyone else, swerving in between traffic, driving on the shoulder to pass people, taking turns way too fast. I was almost 100% positive we were going to crash about 5 times. I’m not sure if this kid has ever driven a car before. He certainly hasn’t been in a crash before because if he had been, he would most likely be dead from how wreck less he was driving. Needless to say, craziest ride of my life. He ended up stopping in front of the train station. I’m not sure if he was waiting for the others or what, but we sat there for about 5 minutes before someone from the outside asked us what we were doing here. Our driver didn’t speak any English. We explained to him that we were trying to get to the Lords Hotel and the driver just took us right there. He said that we shouldn’t trust this guy and should get out of the car and go to the tourism office located inside the train station probably 200 yards away. So we got out, paid our crappy taxi driver, then walked over to the office only to find out that it was closed and locked up. The train station was full of people. There were probably over 1000 people sleeping on the ground, then another 2000 in the vicinity of the station walking around. There are 1 billion people in India, that’s a lot of people! Luckily, there was one guy up by the tourism office who told us of a tourism office that we should go to. He escorted us out of the train station and got us a taxi and told him where to go. Thankfully these two extremely nice guys were there to help us, otherwise we would have been totally lost. The taxi drove us to a tourism office called Incredible India. This is the same agency that they brought on our ship to help people out when doing stuff in India so we knew we should be able to trust them. We explained to the guy our situation and he hooked us up with a driver, a guide, and hotels for the next 3 nights in Delhi and Agra. We were very relieved to have found this place and find this guy to set us up with everything. So after one hell of an adventure through India and really experiencing the culture first hand, our itinerary was pretty much set and paid (except for food) until we went back to Chennai.