First impressions
As I step off the plane in Delhi hits me in hot and humid air counter. The runway of the airport at night populated with real crowds, many more people working here than at a European airport. Or are sleeping. Really on the luggage transport trucks or semi-open barracks on the runway sleep crowded workers.
After I brought up immigration behind me and I picked up my luggage, I finally find the taxi driver with a sign reading "Mr. Eckhoff", which will pick me up. It is about half as tall as I appear and speak no English. But he got a card from my hosts at the Hope Project ( http://www.hopeprojectindia.org/ ). When we finally get to the parking lot and he wants to load my luggage into the car, he pulls a young man my backpack out of hand. Fortunately, he does not run away with it, but throws him into the trunk. My exhausted brain creates it with a schlaflosigkeitsbedingten Delay just to wonder at the strange scene when the situation clears up: The young man really wants a tip for his devoted service carrier. I explain that I have no small change, while still more young men gather around, some of them talk to my "rack" field. I fly into the car.
shows on the highway, the true character of my little taciturn driver. Horn is the background music of the Indian road traffic, but my driver is really for India itself something special. As soon as he saw another road user, it starts to honk at and covers the other with a flurry of camera flashes from his flashing. Its mirrors are folded for safety's sake before, in order to squeeze through tiny gaps between two lorries can. Only after a while I find that is at least for most other drivers in traffic systems offered India. Red lights have anyway only be a force if a police officer next to it, so you can honk to announce his arrival.
My little with his new taxi drivers can afford, a car driver he is one of the stronger road users, a "Maharajah of the road". It is unbelievable what is on this multi-lane highway romps: pedestrians with large Handcart, load bikes, packs of dogs and of course the obligatory cows. These countless auto rickshaws, a cross between a rickshaw and motorcycle, "Horn Please!" Some of which have large lettering, as if the Indians would need to a prompt. We overtake a scooter honking. Sitting behind a young woman, her long black hair and her red sari with gold embroidery blowing in the wind. Before you sit the moped riders. As we pass by them, I see that have been reached between the two somehow, two little boys room on the moped.
sleep by the roadside individuals and families. Even at night are all still small stalls geöffnet.Wir survive the journey, although my driver or one of the artfully decorated truck port, but the squeaky brakes gives up and we reluctantly granted right of way. When I think that the worst is behind me and the traffic calms down, my driver suddenly starts to go into dark deserted dead end to, turns around again, stops short and talk to people on the street. I'm getting nervous. He has moved well.
Finally, we believe shortly before midnight in an alley full of people and strange smells that is too narrow for the car, my driver jumps out of the car without saying a word, fortunately, a short time later he comes back. It shows in the darkness and seems to be well understood that our journey ends here and I should get out of here and can find themselves in my path. I am fortunately just enough presence of mind to him somehow to imply that he gets only his money if he takes me to the location on his map and me there in the "Security Guard" emits. We walk through the narrow alleyways and eventually reach a large building with the words and the sign of the Sufi Order, the founder and one of the main support of the Hope Project. We ring the bell: no answer. Onlookers gather, the taxi driver is talking to them. A helpful man begins to ring tower. We wait. No response. I begin to have me pick out hotels in the area of the guide. Then, suddenly, the taxi driver is gone. A friendly Indian offers me his cell phone to call my contact numbers. There also is not reached. I offer him money for his mobile phone costs, he refuses to smile, accept it. The taxi driver is gone.
opens after a long period of waiting, finally the door to give me a stone falls from the heart I say: "My name is Simon Eickhoff, I think that you are expecting me," but the young man who has opened the door, he watches loss of, and he speaks no English. I would now like to go in and the door behind me close, but the still unpaid taxi driver is still missing and this young man certainly seems up to the date on which it was rung out of bed to have never even heard of my arrival. Finally, also appears the taxi driver again, maybe he was looking for a different input, I give him a good tip for a long time he has been waiting with me.
Finally, a woman steps out of the buildings around the courtyard add to us, we probably have woken up and, luckily, she speaks English. I had the taxi driver but will not tip, as in fact turned out he had brought me to the wrong place, namely the mausoleum Hazrat Inayat Khan, founder of the Order and not for the Hope Project. I ask the up far from their sleep for that. You have understood my situation and the young man offers himself to me to the Hope Project. In there, the night watchman has been waiting some time for me. So I finally reach the place of the next month will be my home.
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