I’m very happy you didn’t say ‘Borat’ when I said I am from Kazakhstan.
The above quote is from a fellow traveler, waiting here in the New
Delhi airport for the guards to open the domestic terminal at one in
the morning local time. The rest of the in the air was exceedingly
uneventful; I had some paneer for breakfast on the plane, and got into
the airport around 8:30 Delhi time. The first thing that struck me?
AK-47’s. Everywhere. American cops have handguns. Indian
cops carry AKs. There’s also a couple of pintle-mounted machine guns
on jeeps around the airport. They also don’t look too handy with
them, either- in a firefight, I’d be just as worried about the cops
shooting me with them as The Bad Guys. Scary. I’d have taken
pictures, but picture taking at the airport is Highly Prohibited.
Other than that, there really hasn’t been much of a problem. I got
my baggage alright, I got my dollars exchanged for rupees alright, and
I had a couple of samosas from a “Café Coffee Day” stand, which
appears to be a chain similar to perhaps Caribou Coffee, or something
else of that nature. I’ve met up with a few other travelers stuck
here for the night- a project management consultant from Austin, TX
who’s visiting family here, and a recent Soc PhD grad from Ithaca, NY,
who is touristing and visiting his girlfriend in Hyderabad, along with
my new Kazhak friends. I’m sitting in the old terminal of the
airport, which really isn’t all too bad; it’s very similar to lots of
places I’ve been in back home. The new terminal is very
shiny. Lots of marble, steel, and glass. Too bad the airline I’m
taking out isn’t using that terminal.
I also came across a hot dog stand at the airport. It’s
interesting, as an American who is used to seeing the American take on
other ethnicity’s foods, to have that reversed. First thing? The
dogs themselves contain neither beef nor pork, are Halal-certified,
and produced in an ISO 9001-2000 certified facility. The most
directly “American” is the “classic” hot dog, which uses relish,
ketchup, and mustard. Given the rest of the menu, I think I could
forgive them the ketchup. The “Chicago” style dog… replaces
the ketchup for BBQ sauce. Oh, the humanity!. Perhaps
on my way out, though, I’ll be trying one of their very Indian-style
dogs that are more down on the menu.
So far the only downer on the trip has been that my ebook reader
got accidentally turned on in my bag, and a key was held down on it,
so the battery got nicely drained. I think I might have to re-train
the battery before the trip is over.
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