In the morning, my second morning, I awoke and paced around the flat for a bit, assuring myself that I could handle going out into the world alone. I was sure that I was capable of getting to the train station and back. Fairly sure. And then I laughed, because I had traveled here alone and there wasn’t any other alternative. I touched my collar and felt the necklace beneath my shirts. I took a deep breath and left the flat. I can do this, I can do this.
The nightmare of the train station to someone alone who has been in the country for twenty-four hours is almost inexplicable. It is like a hall of mirrors with everything distorted and tangled and inside out. My friend had been very explicit: do not speak to anyone outside of the building, do not give money to anyone for any reason, do not acknowledge or listen to what people on the street are saying.
Go directly inside and up the staircase.
Find an office with a sign in English that reads “foreign ticket office.”
Enter and then, and only then, purchase your ticket.
The general guidebooks underestimate the difficulty of the Delhi train station. It needs its own chapter, printed in BOLD. Exiting the rickshaw, a bit shaky because we had almost crashed a handful of times, I had to cross through a makeshift tent city of people living outside the doors on the street. Dogs were roaming. Cows were meandering and sifting through heaps of trash. Families sleeping. Babies wandering. Beggers with broken teeth, with black fingernails, with chapped hands held out. I had wanted to try to blend in, slip past and make my way inside. This was not possible. I was immediately followed by a sea of bodies; men, women and children clutching at my elbows, the tail of my scarf, the back of my jacket.
There are multiple doorways into the immense brick station and once you make it inside, there are multiple staircases to climb. A man trying to sell me tickets in the parking lot approached. “No, thank-you, I’m going to the office inside.” It is closed today because it is Sunday.
It is closed this week for cleaning.
It closed for good last month.
This is the wrong station; the foreign office is at the new station.
BUT, I can help you. Come with me. I can help you. Just over here. Come, come. No, I must go inside. Nothing is inside. It’s across the street. Use the entrance to the back. Take the stairs to the basement. This door is locked. Come, come. I will help you. I will take you this way. Come, come. People pulling on my sleeves pointing different directions. People shouting, each telling a different story.
Each is lying.
When I finally pulled free and made it inside. I asked which stairway to take, a man pointed to the wrong one. I went up. Asked again and someone said, “go across the street, that office is closed.” The room seemed to be spinning. I was remembering my friend’s words, wishing he had come with me, maybe he was wrong, maybe he didn’t know that it was closed on Sundays.
Maybe it had closed.
Maybe I will leave and come back tomorrow.
No, no, no just keep looking.
Climbing over bodies strewn across the floors, I climbed another staircase at the far end of the room. A small man lying on the stairs looked at my foreign face, looked into my green eyes wide with alarm and uncertainty, and pointed in the opposite direction. I brushed past him, arrived at the top of the stairs, and moving down the quiet hall I saw a door with the sign above it reading: Foreign Ticket Office. I went inside and bought a ticket north. When would you like to leave, an immense woman asked? As soon as possible, I replied. There is a train leaving tonight. Take the overnight train to Pathankot and then catch a bus in the morning that will carry you up the rest of the way up into the hill stations of the Himalayas.
Postcards from the Perimeter: NOTES ON TRAVEL 