Seven Hours in India | Wherelse

I’m out of my depth. I’m so in over my head. I thought I was well traveled and knew how to navigate the world when the writing is in a new character set and everyone knows the rules but me.

I was not ready for Japan. Istanbul feels like America compared to Tokyo, which feels like the Planet Jupiter in comparison. I’m here for the first time in my life and between bites of fluffy 7-Eleven egg sandwiches and slurps of ramen, I’ve been writing.

I didn’t get here on a direct flight, though. My trip from Paris to Tokyo took me on an unexpected adventure with my stopover for an afternoon in New Delhi. This week’s Wherelse is all about that. Like the flight I just took, it’s a long one!

Thanks for being here, though. I hope you enjoy this one. I had a lot of fun writing it.

- Jackson Greathouse Fall

One of the more refined luxuries that I’ve found in life is the unmatched feeling of drinking questionable gray-water black coffee after waking up from full on REM sleep on an economy class flight where you’ve been so lucky as to have an entire three-seat row to yourself. I’ve heard this fortuitous arrangement lovingly referred to before as the Poor Man’s First Class, and I’ve come to appreciate the rare few occasions I’ve had the honor. I am currently traveling PMFC.

Since the flight attendants set-dec the cabin prior to boarding, the PMFC traveler is afforded, for the trip, three of everything. Pillows, blankets, and — if you’re feeling greedy — meals. Air India serves two options for their inflight dinner service: Vegetarian, and Non-Vegetarian. I confirm that the non-veg option is, “Chicken?” — “Yes, but the Indian preparation” — makes me laugh. Whether my deciding not to ask for my phantom row-mates meals will be regrettable or fortunate is yet TBD.

Dinner on the 787 Dreamliner from CDG-DEL is white rice, a sort of spicy bean paste, and a chicken curry. The curry had a grand total of three pieces of chicken meat in it, and all mixed together it was actually fantastic. I have a theory that airplane food always will over-index on saltiness, and in AI’s case, spiciness, to combat the effects of altitude on the taste buds. On the ground, it could have been too much. The whole plane smelled exactly like you’d imagine during (and immediately following) meal service.

Since New Delhi is not my final destination of this trip and only an afternoon stopover for me, I’m treating this mealtime as a sort of reconnaissance effort for what tonight’s meal will surely be. Tonight’s, or tomorrow’s. Whatever my next, also overnight long haul is. I’m moving eastward at three-and-a-half hour time zone increments, which I’ve decided is going to be how I will conquer jet lag upon Tuesday morning’s touch down at my final destination. It’s Sunday now; you can work out the math. Each leg is perfectly spaced apart by near-equal nine-ish hour flight times and equal — I can’t overstate this — three-and-a-half hour time zone increments.

I’ve never spent two nights in a row on airplanes, making back to back red-eyes like this. The irony that my seasonal hay fever is flaring up and my eyes are literally red and quite watery, struggling to type this, is not lost on me. What felt like a fun adventure a month ago when I booked this trip (my choices of layover being Singapore or Delhi) is now looking more and more like a Herculean task of, having already arranged my visa-on-arrival with the Indian government, making a mad dash day trip into what in my mind is a loud, smelly, overstimulating, cultural opposite of where I’m ultimately headed.

I can’t wait.

My Flighty flight tracker app says we’ll be making our touchdown at Indira Gandhi airport at 0930 in the A.M., which by even the most conservative estimates means I could make it through customs and into the city by noon, affording me until 1700h until I need to think about heading back to the airport for my connecting 2000h flight. 1630 if I’m playing it really safe, or if I run out of things to do in the city.

My plan as of 0816 local time, 0446 heure Parisien, will be to arrange transport into the city center, as I have no concept of what’s what in which neighborhoods or where to explore. I got two primary pieces of advice from some well-traveled friends “If you aren’t able to arrange transport four hours south-east to visit the Taj Mahal, you’re really better off just staying in the airport”, an idea to which which I categorically reject the premise — and something akin to Tom Lehrer’s old adage: “If you visit an Indian city, you may find it very pretty. Just one thing once you get there — don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!” He wasn’t talking about India, to be fair, but the sentiment stands. Above all, the recommendation to just watch what I eat.

If I’m getting my choice of layover, I’m going to take full advantage of my time there. My 12 hour stopover in Seoul when I was 22 that I spent at Incheon airport bumming around crummy lounges and drinking Starbucks coffee continues to haunt me to this day.

The room has an elephant. What I’ve not yet dared type and what I’m going to pretend like I’m wholly and blissfully unaware of, is the fact that the visa that I was granted (at the cost of USD $25.00 paid via debit card upfront and without any hope for recourse should I be denied entry) was awarded to me understanding the stipulation that my earliest allowable entry into the Indian territory would be no sooner than the 12th of October, or one month after my application was submitted. Was this clerical error? Bureaucratic fine print? Or — I shudder to think — user error in my filling out of their confusing, multi-step online application? The online portal crashed at least five times while I was trying to get it filled out, such that by the sixth go at it I was filling out the same fields on autopilot, with the sort of carefree free-wheeling that would, frankly, totally serve me right if it turns out it was all my fault in the end.

If worse comes to worst and I’m not spending my afternoon drinking chai and eating biryani, subjecting myself to possible “Delhi belly” at a New Delhi deli, then I’ll be sweet-talking the gate agents into a game of musical chairs to try to secure myself another PMFC no-cost upgrade for my onward travel. If— and only if— I can secure that, I think I might have just cracked the menacing plus-seven hour total jetlag debt looming over me.

The flight landed. I cleared customs in record time. Passport control didn’t bat an eye. When he asked what I did, I told him I was a writer. He does a once over of my passport, then looks up at me, raising an eyebrow.

“Blogger?” he says, clocking me.

I nod. He stamps my passport. Welcome to India.

Lost in Arjun Nagar

My first impression of every city I go to is always, for some reason, what make of car dominates the roads. Istanbul was a Fiat town. Delhi is Suzuki. Mine, hailed via the Uber app (but waited in line for à la traditional taxi cab) took me into the city for 600 INR — the exchange rate is more or less 100:1USD here, which makes calculation easy. It feels good to be back in a civilized city where a 45 minute drive from the airport doesn’t cost more than six dollars.

My sources recommended I direct myself to the Hauz Khas area of South Delhi for its proximity to the airport, slightly more chi-chi boho vibes, and general plentitude of stuff to do without needing to move around neighborhoods. I decided to plant it there, and directed my taxi to the Deer Park at what I believed to be the center of the neighborhood: a park and zoo, and by extension, an entire village literally built of and around the 13th-and-14th century ruins of Alauddin Khilji’s sultanate. Again— so I thought. I haven’t thoroughly examined the map of my route yet, but the ruins I saw when I first got in were not the ruins I had come for.

In fact, as I moved around today, I kept thinking “Oh— these are those ruins!” Until I’d inevitably realize I wasn’t in the right spot and would keep going on until I found more old stone mosque-ish ruins. I saw a lot of old run down and, yes, some could say ruined mosques on accident this way.

Meandering my way through the park on foot, I was immediately taken with the lush-ness of it all. I expected a stereotypical sort of filth and grit and was met with Extreme Public Verdancy. I started sweating like a piglet on a spit about five minutes into my walk, constantly wiping my brow with a pack of tissues that I knew I’d tossed in my carry on bag for a reason. Navigating through the park and ultimately finding my way out on the north end, I planned to wander the surrounding village until I found a cafe in which I could park myself for a few hours. I found no such cafe — in fact, I found no such surrounding village — and ended up wandering for an hour.

I wandered and wandered until it dawned on me that I was not in the Hauz Khas area and was in fact in the more residential Arjun Nagar area. Fine. Let’s explore.

Here’s what I found in Arjun Nagar: no fewer than 16 pharmacies, two of which touted “CURES FOR CANCER” in their window displays, 8 eye doctors, 7 general practitioners of medicine, 3 stores selling homeopathic remedies, 1 lone cow just sorta standing there doing a whole lot of nothing in an alleyway, and the same phone number offering yoga classes graffiti’d around the area more times than I could count. I didn’t count how many dry cleaners I walked past, and I stopped chuckling at the “Ladies Tailors” I saw when I passed my third shop with the same sign. I passed quite a few barbers offering men’s cuts for $1.20 — and judging by how quickly I sweat through my clothes, I wouldn’t be surprised if I found myself walking in to get a wash and trim before heading back to the airport.

Delhi smells sharp and familiar, but I can’t quite place it. Somewhere between burnt and metallic. Not necessarily bad, but I get the feeling like if I keep breathing it in it could cause some nose-lung problems down the line.

A brief editor’s aside here, from the plane roughly 7hrs post-takeoff— it just dawned on me (since the smell is sort of burned-in to the brain-nostril axis) that the smell I’m smelling is trash. Burning trash, bottom-of-the-bag trash juice. Awful, rotten trash juice mixed with the most wonderful, sweet resinous incense you can imagine. Not masked by. Not competing with. Just — mixed. A rare and unique sensory experience.

Exhausted and sweaty, I finally realized I was probably in the wrong area about the same time I turned right down an alleyway and almost ran face first into that cow I mentioned earlier. Emerging onto one of the main roads, I decided to hop in a tuk-tuk who drove me back to — again — what I thought was the main Hauz Khas village. This was also not the Hauz Khas village I’d set out to find, but an area called Green Park that just had a lot of signs pointing towards Hauz Khas.

I walked in the first place with air conditioning and coffee I saw— Blue Tokai coffee— a near-identical facsimile of any Blue Bottle coffee in America, down to the color of wood paneling and the typeface and branding on the menus. It’s amazing what you can get away with in other countries. My bet is that Tokai is the Hindi word for bottle.

Update: it refers to the plume of a peacock’s tail. Beats me. Blue Tokai is HQd in India but has since expanded operations to locations in Dubai and Tokyo!

I ordered Indian Cold Coffee, which as far as I can tell is easily made at home. Here’s the recipe: In a blender, combine 2 packets of Nescafe brand instant coffee powder. To that, add milk and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Blend. Serve.

Were ice cubes added? Beats me. Had they been, would I be okay tummy-wise? Also unclear. All I know is that on a hot day in India, this coffee milkshake was sent straight from Svarga. I drank two before continuing on to find lunch.

Despite my sterling gastrointestinal tract record, of which I am very proud, I can’t stop thinking about the advice everyone (even — gasp! — people who have never been to the country!) has been so eager to throw at me to be careful about what I eat and, basically, what I understood as to “try not to enjoy (my)self to much.” Naturally, that drove the anti-authoritarian in me to the first food cart stalls I saw and I genuinely had half a mind to start eating mystery curries off of questionably washed aluminum tray-plates. I know that I would have been totally fine if I did.

Instead, I found myself at one of the satellite locations of Karim’s, a New Delhi institution for over a century. Not the original, which would have been far out of my way — still, the napkins and the door say “ESTD 1913” which is a good enough mark of authenticity for me. I wanted my one meal in town to be stellar.

I got a mutton kabob, which I watched get shaped, skewered, and grilled over hot charcoal right outside where my table was. Then, I got another mutton kabob. I would have gotten two more if I hadn’t also ordered a korma (also mutton,) and a chicken biryani. I came to get down.

The kabob was, as far as I can tell, what put Karim’s on the map — and it totally holds up. When I think about what excites me most about visiting new cities, I can easily distill it down to two things: sitting with my notebook and drinking tea or coffee among the locals (read: old men) who frequent a cafe, and meat on a stick. Simple, elegant, and effective. There’s nothing snooty about taking ground meat, shaping it around a wooden dowel, and charring it til it bleats. It’s served here with some sliced and grilled spiced onions or shallots, and it’s fantastic. Falls right off the skewer when pinched between the thumb and index fingers or a ripping of butter naan — the only way to eat this sort of food. I give it a 9/10. Total cost per ‘bob: 130 INR, or approximately $1.30

When I was ordering, I decided to let the guy recommend me a curry. I didn’t think twice saying yes when he asked me if I liked spicy — forgetting that Western European and American standards for “spicy” Indian food might not exactly translate here. Bear with me now, because I really don’t want to over-embellish or exaggerate anything here. The mutton korma was spicy. Really spicy. Like, one napkin to blow my nose and another to wipe my eyes spicy. But somehow, I the whole thing without picking my fork up once. On post-feeding reflection, I concede that it’s possible someone could have asterisked my order with a note on my skin color and to just… to tone it down just a touch. It could have been way worse, spice wise. It was however full of nibblets of bone that slowed me down, and the portion of actual meat in the thing could have been more substantial. 7/10.

There’s something poetic about going to eat my only meal and deliberately not ordering, like, a butter chicken in the interest of instead trying new things. Even still, I think I should’ve probably ordered butter chicken for good measure. I was so hungry by the time I sat down, I wouldn’t have had any trouble adding another entrée to my total.

Speaking of trying new things, it’s quite remarkable that I’ve made it nearly thirty years on this planet as a generally food-positive and culinarily curious dude without ever trying biryani. I get the concept, and just never felt so moved to try it. It’s spiced rice, prepared often with hunks of tandoori chicken all mixed in. Maybe the rice itself is baked. It was the primary street-food item I saw being sold today from various carts and stands — it’s everywhere — and I wanted to make sure to not be so drab as to just get normal steamed rice with my lunch. “Make my rice accompaniment a meal in and of itself!” My “half portion” could’ve easily fed two people. 8/10.

Butter naan is butter naan. Don’t make me score something out of ten that is already perfect in every way. Somewhere in writing this I misplaced the receipt I was referencing to keep track of individual dish prices— But the whole meal was $13 USD.

After lunch, I had two goals: Masala chai, sipped from a paper cup with a cigarette smoked on a plastic stool on the side of the road — and to get my hair cut. I succeeded in making one of those goals come true.

Chai, from my observation, is the go-to social drink after meals or in between places. I saw friends, lovers, and business associates all perched on various walls and curbs and stools throughout the day, all sipping the same tea from Dixie cups while they chatted.

The tea itself is thick and rich and fantastic— even when it’s in the high 90 degrees Fahrenheit and climbing by this point in the afternoon (and I’ve already mentioned three times in my essay how much I was sweating.) It’s made from a packet spice blend that’s dumped in a saucepan with black tea and milk, simmered over a camp stove style burner, then strained repeatedly with a brisk and inventive two handed ladle-strainer-switch action.

For $0.12 USD, I got a piping hot cup that was at first disappointing in size, until I realized what I was really getting: a post-meal extension of my leisure hour. With this tea, as hot as it is, I’m not going anywhere for at least the next ten minutes. It’s an excuse to keep the party going — and party I did. As I sat and watched people milling about and, let’s be honest, as I watched them watch me — I got what all the hype was about. Why go back to normal life when we can all just keep pushing off our getting back to whatever it is we have to do today, one little paper cup at a time?

During my tea break, I popped open my maps for a glance at where I’d came. At risk of sounding like I’m over exaggerating here — I looked at my GPS three times during my seven hours in New Delhi. Each time I did, the area I was in looked completely the same, but on attempted scrutiny of my journey thus far, it was like the places I had just been exploring were literally disappearing off the map as I left them. Deer Park was gone. I panned and zoomed up and down streets but couldn’t find the Blue Bottle coffee dupe I’d been at a couple hours before.

What I did see now, finally, like some sort of Grail-shaped beacon, was right down the street from me. The street I was on, “Hauz Khas Village Road” (go figure) led straight down the line towards a lake, and on the map in bigger-than-the-street-name letters: “Hauz Khas Village”.

The place I was meaning to go! The place I thought I went already! That one part of Delhi that I thought I’d been exploring when I passed all the pharmacies and the opticians and the cow in the alley. It was a singular, self contained village. It was not anywhere I’d already been. And it was just down the road from me. Auspicious way to end a day, I’d say. Might as well do the thing and see the place I’d set out to do and see.

I rewarded my discovery with a quick jaunt down via another tuk-tuk, which, by the way, I totally get. They’re little covered motorized tricycles with a bench-seat in the back; a rickshaw. The cool part is that in Delhi, in an ideal world, they’re metered — and if the driver tries to mess with the price or anything, it flashes big “TAMPERED” letters on the screen. Of the three tuk-tuks I took-took, not one ever showed an accurate metered fare. I just ended up giving $1 USD equivalent, which made the drivers practically start cheering. Once, in Tangier, I did this to a cab driver and he grabbed my face and kissed me on the cheek. This was basically that.

I’m grateful beyond measure to report now that I ended my day in the Hauz Khas village, which really is a little village! It’s barricaded to rickshaws and most cars and is the only place, all day, where I ever saw another tourist — I saw quite a few of them here — and the only place I ever felt even remotely accosted. Nothing bad — just some kids aggressively asking me for money when I smiled at them. The village seems like the closest thing to a proper bohemian tourist trap, and it is built around the ruins of that mosque-complex, which I happily paid $3.50 USD entry to walk around.

If I’d started my day in the village, it would have completely skewed my idea and understanding of New Delhi. I would have seen rooftop bars with promoters offering free tickets to live music and antiquey stores selling reprinted Bollywood posters (I thought about it) — I would have seen tourists and palatable western coffee shop options with green juices and smoothie bars — and I would have been really bummed out by that.

Instead, I got in fast and hot. I got acrid, trash juice and stray dogs and cows in alleyways. I got honking horns and a shirt that may never be truly clean again no matter how much I wash it. I sweat, dried up, sweat again, and repeated that process. I got spicy curry and spicy chai. I went through two full pocket-sized packs of tissues, with one clutched in my left hand at virtually all times. I didn’t speak one word of Hindi, and got by just fine. I was alone, in a new place, which can be scary. But I loved every second of my day.

I just packed a week’s worth of life experience — of smells, sights, and food — into an afternoon. It’s not like the goal is to live forever or something — I don’t think it ever was — the goal is to bend time so that we can live as much as possible while we’re still here. I think that today, I did just that.

I got back to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Enough time, in fact, to take a shower ($12 USD), get a 15 minute chair massage ($13 USD), and get a 20 minute electric chair massage ($4 USD). If I told you the robo-chair massage was after the human massage, I’ll let you take a wild guess which one was three times better for a third of the cost. I don’t think AI is coming from all our jobs, but that woman had better watch her back. I boarded my flight with near perfect timing.

It’s now 7:10am, and I’ve shifted over from my old faithful 20G to occupying the entire middle-20s row, still in PMFC style. Overnight, we’ve crossed Myanmar, Bangladesh, China, and South Korea. As I write this, I notice there’s been a commotion in the cabin and people are stirring about. I look to my left, and I can see the perfect sunrise breaking over a striking, crystal clear, breathtakingly framed Mt. Fuji. I think it’s time to close my iPad and enjoy my descent into Tokyo.

Now for something completely different.

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A Note to New Readers:

Welcome! I’m Jackson Greathouse Fall, an American based in Paris, living on the road. I write stories about the places I go, the people I meet, and how it all fits together.

Wherelse is my handmade weekly dispatch: part travelogue, part love letter, and a guidebook for the emotionally adventurous.

I’m also on Instagram and TikTok, where I share reels and engage in more visual storytelling. If you like this, you’ll love that.

Avec Grand Plaisir,