I’m starting to get the hang of Delhi… it takes a couple of days to adjust to the tone of a new place. I’m staying in a fairly calm, prosperous area (one street seemed a version of Harley St, with a lot of plastic surgery premises). And the Rwandan embassy is nearby, and a fancy-looking cafe called ‘big fat sandwich’. It’s been okay to walk around these streets getting my bearings but there comes a point when the perimeter needs to be expanded. I chose the area quite randomly- one of the first air bnbs I saw: cheap, hard mattress, breakfast. No need to look any further. Yesterday I was up early again and found some other little parks, where there was plenty of exercising and stretching going on in the chilly morning sunshine. I sat on a bench and watched them, wondering when I would be blessed with enough energy to join them. 

I decided to give myself a task. I’d googled ‘photo galleries’ and one had come up called Photoink. This was a good opportunity to try out the metro, and off I went south out of the city. I came out of the metro onto a large road and followed google map to the road that led to the gallery. This led me to a dusty a lane, past a bit of a rubbish tip and a herd of scavenging monkeys, and then into a field. A dog was on the path and started barking at me, so I turned around. I found a cut-through to the main road, avoiding the monkeys. I asked an auto-rickshaw driver to take me there, but he couldn’t make sense of my map. I suppose I should’ve persevered and approached the gallery from a different angle, but I just got back on the metro, leaving the gallery, stuck in a field somewhere, for another day. I decided instead to find a yoga place that had been recommended to me, a few stops away from my area (Hauz Khas). I got there eventually and followed the sign into the building and up to the second floor, where I found a deserted kindergarten. The security guards wouldn’t show me where it was, they just kept saying it was closed. I think they were a bit worried by the camera and my plaintive cries about the yoga place not existing. Eventually a friendly guy on his way out told me it was on the first floor and to come back on Monday.

It’s these little human interactions that are problematic. I lack the skill to navigate them simply and I always feel like I’m making a hash of these situations requiring communication skills. It’s ok if I’m feeling calm and positive, but when a small problem crops up the lack of connectivity is sorely felt. I’m still learning to manage my reactions so they are as normal as possible, even if I feel cut-off from the situation, and also to accept that I can’t chat with people in the same carefree way as before. 

Back on the street I decided to try a third place: a cafe that I’d seen on the map with an exciting title: Kunzum Travel Cafe. It was near the deer park/water tank (pond) that I’d visited before. It was a fairly lively area of shops, bars etc. There were even some other foreigners there. Near the cafe was a park and an old, quite impressive look-out over the park. The sun was setting, couples hid in the alcoves, others sat on the walls of the old palace and posed for pictures. I was exploring the walls when a young guy hauled me into a video chat with his friend. So I chatted to him (them) for a bit, when really I was quite content to be in silent mode, and he showed me a mausoleum round the corner with the tombs of the Mughal guy who’d built the place, with his wife and son. Then a man started parading around blowing a whistle telling everyone to dismount the walls and get out. I said farewell to the guy and had a look at his instagram: mostly him posing in sunglasses with a leather jacket flung over his shoulder. He was only 20 and seemed a bit sad, but by the look of his page he was on his way to becoming an electrical engineer/male model. The travel cafe turned out to be a bit lifeless, but there was a wall of notes pinned up detailing visitor’s travel dreams, a la “To go on totally crazy and unexpected trips, meet different people and enjoy all the little things, share and learn.” Well yes, that would indeed be lovely. I quite liked this one: “To visit places that will help me forget my worries and will help me to find myself and my peace that is there within. A wish to move into the chaos to settle the chaos within. Amen.” Amen! My heart, however, is with Vimil: “Any fucking European country. Just need some money.” Hope he’s not disappointed when he gets there. I also saw a book of bizarre road warnings. I’d been to India years ago (eight?) and remembered all these funny slogans (‘peep peep don’t sleep’) from the mountain roads in Sikkim and had wished I’d written some down. Now I’ve got the book- didn’t need to write them down after all.

The  jet lag is fading and the appeal of a dawn walk is lessening. Today I decided to do some laundry and was told to download an app. Didn’t really want to use an app. Just fancied taking it to a little shop (since I can’t do it at the guesthouse) and picking it up later, all slightly-too-well-folded. Tried the app. The guy didn’t turn up to collect it. He said he would come again later. No luck, so I  went out for a walk, as there is some maintenance work going on at the guesthouse which has involved a fair amount of banging and a lot of dust. Decided to do my well-tested trick of getting off at a random metro station. Headed towards the centre and got off at the nice-sounding Udyog Bhawan. Photo-opportunity: pile of leaves and a fence in the afternoon light- a very yellowy composition. Got told by a policeman to stop. Realised I was at the Ministry of Defence. Walked towards a large fountain and a greenish area, past a lot of barbed wire. A grand area, with well-watered grass. I saw a family of monkeys chilling on the grass and decided they looked less likely to attack me than the ones at the rubbish dump and started to video them on my phone. I’m generally quite disturbed by monkeys, but there was a baby one. A man in a car beckoned me over and started questioning me, officiously taking down my details (I lent him my pen), and it was some moments before I was released from custody. I was by the Parliament, which looks like a stone football stadium. Absorbed the governmental grandeur before taking a rickshaw (enjoying the chats with the drivers) to Connaught Place- ah! We’re in the big city at last. An oversized ring of white London crescents with a Saturday crowd: Hubbub and shops and promenaders, street dancers and live music coming from bars. A good place to assess the general look and flow of the Delhi-dwellers.

I’ve had several blog-ideas before: the one about walking around London (‘London vignettes’) the one about travelling as a tutor (‘A tutor’s travels’) and the one about the time I spent with braces (‘A brace of time’). I know the last one would’ve been a hit. Sadly none of them actually made an onscreen appearance. I’ve always been more of a walking-writer. I walk, thoughts meld into sentences which whirl around into some kind of punchy order, and are then promptly forgotten. If I’ve ever had the urge to write, I’ve dashed it into a notebook- illegible, read again by accident five years later. It’s fair to say I’m not a natural blogger. I’ve never travelled with a computer and the thought of tapping out posts on a phone, battling with autocorrect, has never seemed appealing. Recently I’ve taken to typing out words, clusters of them, on my Instagram posts; this represents a huge shift towards an audience-facing perspective, but I’m still not quite sure why I do it. 

Now, however, I do have my computer. I do have time. And I’m travelling, so it’s incredibly annoying to be hoofing diaries around with me ‘just in case’ I decide to go through them to glean razor-sharp insight. Plus I’ve got a bad back so I need to keep my suitcase light. So I have decided to write words here. It means I can practice forming sentences beyond the requirements of Whatsapp chit-chat, powerful as that may be, enhanced by ironic/not ironic emoticons of cabbages and horses. Having been travelling and living here and there for so many years it seems a little off the pace to be starting a travel blog, especially as my most exciting escapades may well be behind me. Well, that’ll make it more original. If I were to read travel blogs (trogs), then I would certainly be drawn to all manner of bright young Therouxs (bad choice- he’s rather grumpy) discovering literally tons of waterfalls and capturing exquisite imagery of smoothies. I’m jealous, of course. When I was travelling around jumping off waterfalls and ‘river-boarding’ towards a bad back, the only followers I had were mangy dogs and the only documentation equipment I owned was a film ‘point and press’ with a zoom that made a slight crunching sound- I think it had some sand in it. (Actually I loved that little Yashica.) Filing Copy on the road meant a fortnightly trip to the internet cafe to email my mum. Maybe they’ll be printed in a pamphlet one day, once this blog’s taken off. 

The other main reason to write a blog (apart from filling up the acres of time now that I’m not getting lashed with the Danes at the hostel) is that it’s quite hard for me to enjoy travelling. Sounds catchy! For nearly three years I’ve been living (and travelling) with a slightly unusual brain disorder which makes me feel spaced out and generally detached from the world around me. This is absolutely not ideal. Travel is a space in time to embrace the new, connect with people, feel the energy of a place, be inspired, gain fresh perspective, feel joy. To embrace travel is to be open. A good traveller just needs to connect. Relationships are made and the memories are vivid and clear. Travels linger and seep in. All of that is a bit tricky when you feel cut off, floating in a different space to those around you. Everything seems unreal, you observe everything, you know it’s real, you know nothing is wrong with the world, and yet… perception has shifted. The mind is foggy, there’s a divide between you and the world. It’s hard to bridge the gap and connect. And into that I walk, because what else is there to do? A day goes by, it has its challenges, it’s passed by in a daze, a haze. It’s hard to feel the day’s events with the tang of lived reality. By writing something down, I’ll at least be catching it, remembering that it really happened, even if I didn’t feel fully present at the time. 

I flew Sydney to Delhi yesterday in a single 12.5hr bout. One of the best things about Sydney was being able to talk to the taxi drivers. On the way to Sydney there was something in the Qantas video about Sydneyfolk getting in the front of taxis- ‘that’s just the way they are’. I needed Uber a few times. Each time: boom I’m in the front having an awesome chat with the driver. Bangladesh: been there (nostalgic, happy), Syria: been there! (serious, involved, we’re missing turns), Iran: not been there (but let’s have an intense chat anyway with an extremely large amount of swearing). And finally, the taxi to the airport: Leanne from Sydney: Chilled, chatty, curious, charming. Loads of Cs. Of course I felt strange, detached, different to how I ‘should’, different to ‘normal’, that long-distant, vaguely remembered state of Normal: present, clear, sharp. But through the fuddle and the tired brain and the effort to be relaxed and communicate, I just enjoyed those chats. It made me realise how a long time in places where you can’t really speak the language can take its toll. I’ve probably got some other things to say about Sydney, but I’ve been up since 4am today and I’m going back to Sydney in May, so I’ll deal with it then. Mainly, I felt it was important to mention the taxis. 

So it is fortunate that I am in another country where (lots of) people speak English, although it was planned that way. I have been here before; it wasn’t a surprise that people speak English in India. I should point out that people here, a great number of them, speak English about as well as Somerset Maugham or George Orwell. The Air Bnb guy used the word ‘dichotomy’ today in his description of the neighbourhood. I went out this early morn for a walk- very rare for me to be out on the dawn streets, almost only feasible with a dose of jet lag. I was surprised at the number of dogs lying around, a few of them bearing the indignity of yesterday’s Holi markings: a dash of yellow on the forehead, a palm of pink on the rump. The walk didn’t go well. A few ATMS failed me in a row, the last of which made the ‘i’m giving you money now’ rattle and then just stopped working. I realised at that moment that I wasn’t feeling calm and needed to get back into my meditation routine. But in the park things looked up. It was full of beige dogs, but they seemed to be mostly dozing. On one side of a fence a huge group of deer were staring at me. I had found the deer park. They were waiting for me to throw bread at them. It was cool, the first rays were glinting through the smog, I heard men screaming. I had found a field of kabaddi players, celebrating Holi. A film I’d watched on the plane featured a kabaddi scene in which the character who later shot himself (spoiler) was roughed up by his bullying cousin. So it was nice to see a real game on my first morning in the city. Men were being slapped and grappled to the ground, but all seemed amicable. I think I remember seeing Kabaddi on Blue Peter about 25 years ago, so I was fully prepped to enjoy the spectacle, although it’s quite hard to work out what’s going on. It’s like a cross between tag, sumo and rugby. After about 30 seconds I was beckoned over by some stately gentlemen to the main observation bench and asked to sit down as their guest. It was good to get a closer view of the action, and I was relieved not to be invited to play. Then they stopped playing and sat on the grass and listened to a speech and sang a song. It was a social gathering where games were played, stories told, community awareness fostered. I felt a bit awkward, sitting there on the bench, with quite a lot of people looking at me, but again, it was satisfying to have a bit of chat with the gents, dignified and welcoming as they were, and I went on my way feeling rather uplifted, ready to enjoy the rest of the park.

Later on, looking for an ATM that worked, in need of at least several rupees to buy some tea, no doubt looking rather lost and forlorn, a man- my saviour- called out to me. Pravin was at the shop getting some milk and, being a laid-back kind of guy, started chatting. We drank some tea at the shop- a good dose of real chai. He took me to an ATM, getting pummelled by water-bombs from balconies on the way, passing kids playing Holi, throwing water and powder, past young guys totally dyed and drenched. We went to his place, where he was looking after his father. There were a number of guitars in the room, wearing hats. He gave me cereal, good tea from his home place (darjeeling), some home-made dumplings, some more tea. We talked a lot. He was a musician, had lived in London. He had a photo of a little girl on his phone: his daughter, now 22, who he’d not seen for years. He was in his early 40s, seemed much younger. He was sharp and engaged, smoked a bit, talked a lot about being blessed. I felt a little dazed: tiredness, new streets, a new person to try to connect with. But that was a good start. Holi, smiles, communication.