City at night

A few more notes from my late night arrival.

In Delhi you take prepaid cabs from the airport, as a security measure - mine boasted some connection with the Delhi police, ever vigilant, but I couldn't say how. The issue is that if you get into a cab with just anyone, they are liable to drive you out to some corner of the sprawl and rob you or otherwise do you harm. Here, you prepay to receive a voucher, which the cab driver must countersign and submit when he drives you away. If anything untoward happens, up to and including your disappearance, somebody knows who you were with, at least.

Delhi is a sprawl, by the way. I forget how my perception of urban landscapes has been shaped by three of the few cities - New York, London, Calcutta - that are primarily build up. I can't speak too informedly here, but in my limited experiences today Delhi's highrises appeared as lonesome buoys in a sea of smaller buildings, and a surprising amount of green.

Much of the ride to the hotel was along an eight-lane highway, still moderately trafficked at 1am. Along with colorfully painted trucks and businessmen in compact Japanese cars, I saw some late night cyclists and at least one man on horseback. He was four lanes across by the side of the road, and I couldn't quite make out, but he appeared to be dressed as Mughal courtier, complete with small white turban and well-trimmed mustache. He made no sense, but sometimes these things don't.

I also saw a man straddling two lanes in his minivan, talking on his cell phone. Just one example of the fruits of India's rapid development.

Last observation about the process of getting settled: I need to properly learn Hindi. This is just getting ridiculous.