At the Indira Gandhi International Airport, I was standing on the curb out front when a shiny black car pulled up, the driver got out and opened the back door for me and flung open the trunk for my suitcase, and I climbed in the back seat while slipping off my backpack. It weirded me out that three people had already helped me; they each had their own little designated job. I also felt like a hippie posing as a princess, since so much of my travel experience involves staying at student hostels, walking long distances, and riding subways.

After that I experienced Delhi traffic. The trucks have high-pitched, frantic horns, reminiscent of Harpo Marx’s bicycle horn. I laughed when I heard the first one, as a bright green truck whizzed past, and the driver laughed at my laugh. He was very friendly, which is a good thing because I otherwise might have been less amiable whenever he squeezed in next to a truck with only an inch or two to spare. On the other hand, I was so manic that even if the driver had sharply swerved from one lane to the other, I might have blithely giggled and squealed, “Wheee!”

The drivers disregard the lines on the streets; they act as if two lanes are really three or four lanes and huddle together when they stop at a street light, where a motorcycle weaves around all the other vehicles and gets in front. It’s funny to watch, at least in my opinion. I doubt it was merely the jet lag that prevented me from worrying about dying in a car crash. I was so euphoric that I may as well have rolled down the window, stuck my head out, panted, and wagged my tail in silly doggy glee.

I said, “It sure is a lot of traffic for this time of night.” The driver called the trucks “lorries,” like the British, but I had anticipated that Indians would speak British English and might be confused by Americanisms. Most of the vehicles are colorfully painted trucks with a yellow background and green or orange script and often flowers or other designs painted on them. They were shaped differently than any vehicles I’ve seen before. Taxis look like boxes on wheels, and other vehicles remind me of London cabs.

The driver, as he raced along, gave me a little driving tour. It was after dark, so I would have had a better view in daylight, but he pointed out various buildings to me, such as in an area full of embassies for many different countries, including the U.S., and they all looked like huge palaces behind brick or stone walls. Actually, it seems like most of the big buildings have walls and gates. We passed what reminded me of a gate at the border between Pakistan and India, and the driver explained that’s for people who want to move back to India, including from Saudi Arabia. The most aesthetically appealing structure was of all things a military memorial: a shiny black tower with a huge sphere inside the base.

We passed Nehru’s house! A pale stone wall surrounded it, and from what I could tell the house was a simple but large building behind the wall and gate, at which a blue sign announced, “Nehru Planetarium.” The driver explained that Nehru was the first president of India, and I smiled and said, “Oh, yeah, I’ve read about him!” The driver giggled with me. I didn’t mention that I’ve also read the speech he made when independence from the British Empire finally came along in 1947.

The car stopped in front of the tall white modern Park Hotel, where a bellhop took my

suitcase out of the trunk, the driver disappeared, and I entered through the front glass doors.

On the following day, after I met up with my fellow travelers, we rode the tour bus for the first time. It stopped and a guy stood on the meridian to our left and yelled at the driver. A crowd gathered, and a boy brought a large basket of fruit. Ann, sitting behind me, observed with a laugh that the fruit seller must have figured that with this many people gathering, he may as well set up shop. Eventually someone explained to the rest of us that the agitated noisy guy thought we hit his motorcycle. Or perhaps he wanted to convince the driver that we hit his motorcycle so that he could make a few extra rupees.

In what was surely rush hour traffic, the tour bus moved along at snail's pace on a highway. Traffic came to more or less a halt as a group of camels with passengers merged with and blocked traffic. Rather than feel irritated at the delay, I stood up on the bus and stared open mouthed at the camels. This was worth getting behind schedule.

About a year later, I was back in Delhi. During the ride from the airport, I sat in the back seat of a white car, and I had trouble understanding the driver; he had a thick accent, or maybe it’s because I’ve only just gotten here and haven’t adjusted to Indian accents yet. And he had trouble understanding me. I have a speech impediment and after this journey I’m less coherent than usual. Dry mouth and all. I gawked and gawked at the scenery and thought: It’s good to be back! The derelict, dingy buildings; the crazy honking traffic; the rickshaws and weird green motor rickshaws that look like something a little kid assembled in a shed; the pedestrians in bright salwar-kamiz or pale kurtas and pants (really, Indian women generally wear prettier clothing than men); the dogs lying on the sidewalks, even right outside the airport. Meanwhile, when we stopped abruptly at a busy intersection and I saw motor rickshaws race to the intersection and come to a sudden stop, I grinned and nearly burst out laughing. The crazy traffic, as it had the year before, struck me as hilarious.

I saw plenty of apartment buildings with balconies, across which people had strung laundry to dry including towels of a wide variety of colors. I saw walls made of red brick plastered in white—and could tell there was brick underneath because the plaster had come off in places and exposed the brick. Before I noticed this, I assumed the walls were mud. We passed through the embassy neighborhood, like last year, and I noticed one building with lots of police and security vehicles, and we passed an intimidating police station. At some point, I saw behind a fence a mound with a soldier walking on top of it.

We turned a corner, and straight ahead was an elaborate red wall and behind it I saw an impressive red (sandstone?) structure with a huge dome. The driver said, “Do you know what that is?”

“Is it the Red Fort?” I asked dubiously.

“No, it’s the president’s house.”

“Wow! It’s gorgeous!” It makes the White House look like a ranch house. “I didn’t think it was old enough to be the Red Fort.”

It wasn’t long before we saw a high red stone wall with quite a bit of detail work, and beyond it was a huge red stone structure with elaborate little cupolas here and there, and the driver confirmed my suspicion by saying, “That is part of the Red Fort.” Soon we were going past a lot more of the Red Fort, which does indeed look much older than the president’s house, which can’t be more than two hundred years old (and I didn’t mention—the parliament house is near the president’s house, and though it’s Neoclassical it’s circular). Anyway, there was a white structure or series of structures along one wall of the Red Fort, with curving archways filled in with white grillwork. The walls around the Red Fort have curvaceous crenellations. It was all very Mughal-looking, which of course it is. And the red walls went on and on as we went through crazy traffic, and I stared open-mouthed.

I later rode a taxi from the guesthouse. The taxi driver from the guesthouse didn’t know the way to Gandhi Smriti. I had explained to the guesthouse manager that it’s near a certain hotel, and he explained this to the taxi driver, who didn’t speak English. We went around in circles and passed the rather prominent and regal-looking hotel a couple times, and eventually the taxi driver resorted to pulling over and asking people if they knew the way to Gandhi Smriti. I’m a bit surprised, since it’s a major landmark: it’s Mohandas Karamchan Gandhi’s final home and where he was assassinated in the garden.

On a busy street, kids approached the taxi and tried to sell magazines through the window. They were school age and probably desperate; perhaps their parents insisted that they go work on the streets because the family needs money right now and is too poor to wait till the kids have an education and could therefore have jobs that would pay much better. I felt sorry for them, but I was completely not tempted to buy magazines like Cosmopolitan. Yuck.

As we took a wide street, a clan of monkeys ran across the street in front of us, and I laughed like a little kid. To the right, a painted elephant carrying passengers slowly walked in the opposite direction. I grinned and thought, “I love India!” I was living in the moment and trying not to worry about the fact that we were lost; the worst thing about that, in my view, was that I was holding up a group of people with my tardiness. It occurred to me that they might give up waiting for me and drive off.

I have since learned that other travelers sit in terror in the back seats of taxis when they visit India. Rather than amused by the crazy and chaotic traffic, they are scared of getting into an accident. However, the more time you spend in India the more you notice that the drivers seem to have an intuitive sense of what the other vehicles are going to do. As wreckless as they may seem, they can stop abruptly within a few inches of the vehicle next to them. Far from believing this proves that they're terrible drivers, I think that's quite impressive.