And in the Beginning...

   At 5 o'clock in the afternoon we met in the basement of Hotel Maan in the Karol Baugh district of New Delhi with Manu, the NOLS instructor charged with transporting us from Delhi to the NOLS base in Raniket (no easy task.) Although a few of us had gone on a tour the city previously during the day, many had not met so we sat in a circle around the table and introduced ourselves over chai.
   Andrew Backus: 22yo engineering grad of Santa Clara U in CA, originally from Vashon Island, WA. We are now travelling together after the course
   Jen Roberts:27yo who works in a PT office in Orange County, CA
   Avery-24yo from Boulder, CO
   Phillip Fleishman-18 yo taking a year off before beginning Harvard next fall. I leave tomorrow afternoon to go to Sri Lanka with him, Andrew B, and Phillip's father
   Ricky Simpson-27yo attorney from Seattle who works as a house parent in a home for girls
   Giselle-23yo mess of career confusion from Chicago
   Gavin GLider-24yo children's camp outdoor program director from Philadelphia
   Josh-28yo from NYC
   Andrew Oakley-20yo drummer/skier from Boulder
   Chris Stone-35yo from South Carolina
   Kyle Klein-22yo rugby player who attends FSU
   Erin-21yo from Orcas Island, WA

    Manu goes over the next few days of travel and we get our massive amount of luggage aboard a bus that will take us to the train station. We immediately hit traffic and become stuck in a festival progresion. The 30 min drive becomes one of our first lessons in the general attitude of travel in India which is along the lines of "You'll get there eventually.....probably" as it stretched into a crawl of over an hour. In Africa, ex-pats have a phrase said to explain the frustration, pain, poverty, occasional grandeur, beauty, filth, vibrant population, and lack of a "western" timeframe. T.I.A......"This is Africa." We tried "T-Double-I" but it didn't fit so we have adopted T.I.N.A. or Tina....."This is not America." The US Embassy official who helped me apply for my emergency passport though that was funny as I explained to him the past two weeks of travel without a passport or visa. Luckily I now have a crisp, blue, US seal passport valid for 1 year with a not-so-crisp, faded blue ink, India seal visa stamped inside. The man at the Indian consulate assures me it will allow me to travel freely as a normal visa, but T.I.N.A.....this country is an adventure.
  Upon arriving at the train station, the first think I noticed was the continuation of chaos, just amplified. The smell of Delhi train station is not best described, but experienced. The intricate blend of feces, Diesel, urine, food vendors, and stagnant water fill the nose and stifle your breathing more than the shirt you hold to your face in a vain attempt to filter the fumes of machine and human exhaust. We jostle, push, and pull our way through the masses along the platform feeling much like.....well, toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. Someone must have been rolling the tube from the end because we pushed along whether we moved out feet or not. The group piled its gear together in a pile near our gate (actually not our gate, it was a good walk away, TINA) and fomed a circle around it. Apparently we were quite the spectacle in the station as the large pile of duffels became a focal point for the interest of others in the station. While we circled the wagons our back pockets were "cased" by small children looking for an easy grab. Erin, who was dressed in traditional Hindi garb, was the delight of 4 men who wanted to take pictures with him and began to lead him away. Manu intervened and we stayed in the circle until our train pulled in. We find our appropriate gate and board the train. Manu gives us a snack of "Glucose Crackers" and we find our berths, stow our gear, and are soon asleep....chugging across the Indian nightscape toward Raniket and the Himalaya.